


Sleepless Savior

by deikus_is_hellbound



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BuckyxReader - Freeform, F/M, Marvel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 18:01:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7232983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deikus_is_hellbound/pseuds/deikus_is_hellbound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's put himself in Cryofreeze, willingly. That man will be the death of you, unless the task of getting him out of Cryo kills you first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepless Savior

It’s been three days since Buck decided to put himself back in Cryo. You can’t quite wrap your mind around why he would want that, even though the man himself had voiced the evidence to you plenty of times over horrendously late cups of tea. You knew he didn’t trust himself, and you knew that he constantly worried about the other side of him coming out unexpectedly. You understand all those things about him but what you don’t quite understand is why he’d think it would be better for him to pause life for an unprecedented amount of time. His trust in Rogers’ perseverance is completely faultless, because it’s a very real possibility that they’ll never figure out how exactly to erase everything HYDRA put into his mind. He could be stuck in there forever, never coming back to the living all because he couldn’t quite find a way to cope with everything HYDRA had forced upon him. 

Not that you can blame him. It’s not as if he’s coping with a thoroughly worn path. It’s not the death of a loved one, or some heartbreak from a pretty girl (though, from the way that Steve talks about him back in the 40’s, Buck’s probably not had many of those). He was brainwashed. He was bred to be a heartless assassin who stopped at nothing to get the job done, and with a list of a few words he could be sent spiraling back into the dark, dreary pit that he’d managed to drag himself out of. That kind of torment is unfathomable. You don’t know how he got to where he did, but you know that he’s made some pretty impressive progress, and sticking himself back in the freezer seems like nothing but a step back to you. You wish that you could have been of more help to Bucky while he was conscious. Maybe if you’d done more than just comfort him after a bad nightmare he wouldn’t have given in so easily. While you’re sure that alone could have gone a long way with him, it was far from doing anything close to fixing his problem. Or even delaying it. It’s not as if you had the magical cure to scary russian brainwashing techniques put into practice over 70 years ago sitting in your bathroom cabinet. All you know is that having a crying, hyperventilating soldier on your hands at four in the morning had driven his plight deep into you  heart. You had grown to have a soft spot for the man when he had tried so hard to push you away. 

Usually Bucky was on the brink when you came to him at night, but he’d always kept enough semblance of himself to know that the lucid part of him wouldn’t want you to see him that way. Once you were persistent enough he let you coax him out of his room.  It only took making him one cup of tea after a trying dream to get him to see that you weren’t trying to feel him out for treachery. You had sat with him on the floor next to his bed until his breathing settled, and then until the warm liquid you’d placed into his hands had been emptied. Anytime he had a nightmare, you had been there for him. Perks of having a room right down the hall from his own, you could hear when the poor tormented man cried out in his sleep. Empathy was all you could offer him at first, after all everyone in your profession suffered from these plaguing nightmares. They all have demons, even you. 

After the man seemed to grow a bit more comfortable with you, you could even get a few words out of him. And eventually that led to him occasionally divulging the subject of his nightmares with you when you attempted to convince him that talking would help. The two of you had bonded over such a simple, yet intimate thing that a beautiful friendship had blossomed in no time at all. Distracted by your own troubles, you’d taken to spending your sleepless nights with a man who had about as much luck getting through the night as you did. The two of you had grown close, intimate. A special bond had formed between you two when he divulged his troubles to you. He no longer was alone in his fight, and you were able to distract yourself from your own torment by trying to be a shoulder to lean on. You didn’t mind, actually you rather enjoyed making Bucky tea and sitting in his room with him, or on the couch with him with a movie so late at night that everything else seemed still. He’d started to let you rest your head in his lap as he played with your hair, allowed you to show him the delight of warm, fudgy poptarts just out of the toaster, and even once he let you examine the constricting plates of his left arm - though that seemed to make him slightly uncomfortable. It was as if the two of you shared your own secret little world no one else was a part of. Something about it, despite the poor causality, was peaceful and comforting. 

You wrench your eyes shut, thinking of the last moment which had driven him over the edge and shattered all progress of you had made. 

_ “Stop--” he pulled away from you, his normally cold eyes glossy. You furrow your brow in protest and try to speak, but nothing but static surfaces. This only hurts him more. Even as he physically recoils, what hurts you the most is the look in his eyes as he destroys the emotional link you two had worked so hard to establish. You palm the bruise he gave you round the neck as he walks away from you stiffly. You’re unable to fix it, tell him that it’s not his fault, and are stuck just staring after his figure that seems to curl further in on itself each time he takes a step.  _

You remember the moment which caused the catastrophe very clearly. Bucky’s hand on your throat - oh how that bruise had absolutely murdered him.You knew Bucky thought he’d ruined it. If only you could have  _ talked  _ to him. 

His decision to do this nearly felt like a stab in the back. He could have talked to you about it. He could have explained that he was struggling; maybe you could have helped him find a way to cope with it. 

But he’d chosen not to say anything to you and lock himself up in a self-imposed cage for an unknown duration. So today you sit with that same cup of chamomile and lavender tea you used to make for him beside the tank containing a completely sedated Bucky. His ever present frown is stuck to his face until Steve deems it a good idea to set him free. Honestly, though, it’s not a lot different with him being out of Cryo either. You remember the small nuances of his seemingly permanent expression: withering looks thrown in Sam’s direction, a jumbled melding of confusion, relief, and anxiety when he looks at Steve, tormenting lines of horror crinkling around his eyes when he awoke hyperventilating and you had just poked your head through his door in the middle of the night. Did you ever see him really smile the whole time you’d known him? The man really is a ghost in more ways than one. His enigmatic nature hardly scared you away. On the contrary, it only intrigued you more. You smile a bit fondly as you sip at the steaming liquid in your hands, remembering that even if he wasn’t much of an expressive man, he’d certainly had a quick tongue on him. 

Through your late nights with him, you had learned that Bucky never liked anything in his tea or his coffee. He took everything black. You liked your chamomile and lavender tea with just a little bit of lemon. The first time Bucky made the tea, he’d overpoured the lemon. You find yourself wishing for a cup of one of those well meaning citrus bombs in his absence, even though it’d been nearly inconsumable. 

“Oddly enough, Buck, it’s been quiet without you.” you murmur in the general direction of the tank. You’d started to get your voice back. The gravelly tone of it makes you brush your fingers over the yellowing ring around your throat instinctively. “You never really talked much while you were here but Steve certainly did. Now he’s sorta mopey.” You don’t know what in the hell you’re doing. Bucky’s not going to answer you . He isn’t going to magically open his eyes and tell you  to hand him his own cup so you two can watch the seeming paradise outside the window of the T’challa residence. You laugh at yourself, shaking your head. Maybe you just need someone to talk to. Someone who isn’t a near complete stranger or Steve Rogers, mourning the loss of his best friend for a second time. 

You missed Bucky just as much as he did, but you couldn’t properly profess this to a man whose grief ran beyond missing a guy he’d only known for a short while. It just didn’t seem right to put that burden on Steve’s shoulders when he was so troubled about it himself. No one knew Bucky better than Steve, after all. “T'challa’s kind of nice. Talking to him is awkward though. He’s busy with King things anyway.” You sip at the tea again, staring out at the waterfall outside. “He’s never really around. And Steve.” you sigh. “I don’t know.” 

You glance up at the man who had somehow become your friend through the most trying of circumstances. Even though your interactions seem brief when compared to his and Steve’s bond, Bucky had become the only person you’d  _ really  _ connected with. Steve and you never really had much in common. It’s not as if you don’t care for him, but it’s not as if he’d know your middle name or anything. He’s not a bad guy, but it’s difficult to find anything to talk about with someone who has the concerns of so many people in mind. In fact, the only thing you seem to have in common is a mutual appreciation of food and a need for Bucky’s wellbeing. Bringing up the latter with him didn’t really make for the best conversation. 

Clint had gone home to his family as soon as they’d busted him out of that prison on the ocean, Scott and Wanda stuck around, but they mostly keep to themselves in the aftermath of the chaos. Sam is also wandering around the facility, but he and Steve are pretty close, and you and he hadn’t exchanged many words. He never had a fondness for Bucky, and when you’d become friends with the man, it felt almost like an admission of picking sides. Sam didn’t dislike you, but you and he just didn’t really get on either with that unspoken friction beneath the surface. So now that Bucky’s gone, the T’challa residence is quieter than ever with the separation of the rest of the Avengers shoving all of you apart.

“I hope we figure this out soon.” You sigh regretfully.

*** 

“Steve, leave it be for one night.” you beg, rubbing your tired eyes. Steve grunts distractedly, rifling through some old files Natasha was kind enough to track down for them. They don’t see Romanoff all that often; only when she gets a spare moment from the UN. But she and Steve are buds so a quick favor wasn’t all that out of line. 

“I think we’re getting somewhere, though.” He insists, not even sparing a moment to look back at you . You sigh, feeling the true lengths of your fatigue with how your eyes sting when you close them. You force them open, placing a hand on Steve’s shoulder. 

“You’re going to work yourself to death on this. You can’t help Buck if you’re too tired to think straight.” You try and reason with him, but you’ve found that Steve is too stubborn to listen to advice half the time. You force your point by reaching over his shoulder to snatch the manella from his fingers. He’s too tired to react quickly enough to keep you  from getting it. Steve scoffs, pausing to stare at the wall ahead of both of you in annoyance. 

“He’s counting on me, you know that. I can’t just let this go.” Steve finally turns to look at you , and you just cross your  arms as he does. 

“He’s not counting on just you. He’s counting on all of us. He needs help, not someone running themselves into the ground. You’re not going to master psychology running on fumes.” Steve purses his lips, and snatches the file back from you quickly. 

“Sleeping isn’t my priority right now, you know.” If it weren’t for the fact that this were Steve Rogers who doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, you’d have almost called that a snappy tone. Apparently even Rogers has his limit for niceties. you can’t blame him for being stressed about Bucky’s predicament...or his choice. Hell, you’re surprised he even agreed to it. You wouldn’t have. But that’s Rogers for you. He always would respect people’s personal decisions. Even if they may not be for the absolute best. 

This hurts him to endure. You know that because Bucky’s pain is hurting you just as deeply. You’re trying to be patient with Steve, but the man’s starting to get dark circles beneath his eyes to rival even yours. It’s completely out of character. 

“Bucky wouldn’t want this,” you state flatly. “He’d want you to take care of yourself. Especially since he couldn’t do that for himself.” You don’t stay to argue, though. Your energy is completely expended and arguing sounds just too tiresome to bother with. You turn on your heel and walk out before Steve gets a chance at a rebuttal. You wish that Steve would see sense, but the only person you’ve ever seen talk some sense into that man is currently out of commission. You rub your eyes. This cycle is the epitome of frustrating. You’ve got to help Bucky so he can get out of Cryo. Steve’s running himself to death to help Bucky get out of Cryo and won’t listen to you. You need Bucky to get his goddamn ass out of Cryo because there’s no way in hell Steve will let you near that off button without his consent. You want to scream. 

The halls in the T'challa residence are long and winding, and for the first week of your stay you couldn’t find your way around even if it meant finding the damn bathroom on time.  But now that the halls have become familiar you know as you march down the hall that the fork leading from the place Steve has made his office area has an elevator to the left and stairs to the right. You stop in the fork, stuffing your hands into your pockets as you stare at the long glass window stretching between those tandem points of reference. There’s a choice laid out before you and you’re not sure which one to pick. Instead you peer outside into the monotone fauna. The water seems peaceful, and if you stare hard enough you can see the flicker of an animal in the distance between a wriggling tree branch. 

To your left is the path to the Cryo tube, and to the right, stairs wind up in a spiral to the bedroom the king had so kindly lent you. It’s spacious, fancy, and so fantastically empty. Barely lived in at all. You had initially wondered if anyone had ever even slept in that bed. Something about the room itself was unsettling; but it may just be your insomniac talking. Either way, it proved too alienating for you to get even a semblance of a good night’s rest. Even the full mattress seemed too pristine and untouched that you barely could get through a half hour in it without waking up feeling jittery. Especially now that Bucky is gone, you’ve hardly been able to sleep at all. Apparently, you can’t take your own advice on either front because thinking about how there’ll be no cry in the middle of the night to use as an excuse to stop trying insistently to sleep, the action doesn’t seem all that appealing. The truth is, your dreams torment you just as Bucky’s do, and sometimes they even follow you into the light of day, as you know his do. You liked to think it had been part of the reason he had opened up to you a little. He could see the look in your eyes when you had poked your head through his door the first night. There had been no pity in that gaze, only concern and understanding. Who else to understand someone so broken and beaten than someone who shared the same predicament? 

Instead of going right toward a nice warm bed and a good night’s sleep, you head toward the elevator. 

The doors ding open and you peer out into the darkness of the lab. Bucky’s box is the only thing emitting any light, and it hardly puts off more than a soft glow. The small illumination is enough for you  to find your favorite rolley-chair and push it over close to his soundly sleeping figure. You sigh, flopping down into it which rolls you slightly away from him. Lazily, you use your  feet to pull yourself back, sinking your cheek over your fist. 

You glance up toward the sleeping man, wondering if he gets to have any dreams while he’s in there. Part of you hopes that he does if only to retain some sense of normalcy and life, but the other part of you that recalls what most of his dreams were like hopes that he doesn’t dream at all. It’s a double edged sword either way. 

“Your friend is stupid, and I hate him,” you inform the sleeping man petulantly, before sighing in defeat. They both know that you doesn’t hate Steve. Well, you do sometimes. “Steve’s a mess, Bucky,” you add softly after a few moments of thought. You stare out the window with tired eyes, hearing nothing but the hollow thrum of the machine beside you  and your own harsh heartbeat. “He won’t listen to me at all. I wish you’d have told me how you got him to see sense before you made this choice.” You chuckle, leaning your head up against the glass. It’s nothing like the metal of his left shoulder, but you can use you  imagination. “I don’t think I can move his fat ass to a bed if he passes out at the table.” You fight tired eyes. “Your metal arm would really come in handy with that. I can’t imagine how heavy he is, honestly.” A snort. “I couldn’t even push him off the couch for nap rights.” You take a deep breath, blowing it out slowly as you  eyes persistently slip shut. “But I say that like I’m doing any better job of taking care of myself.” You mumble as exhaustion begins to take over your body no matter how much you will it away. “Can’t believe that I spouted all that crap to you about getting better when I can’t do it myself.” With an amused exhale, your body slumps against the glass. You are able to fall asleep there with your head leaned up against the glass and your legs sprawled awkwardly across the arms of the chair. Even though he’s not conscious, Bucky provides enough comfort to ease your troubled mind. 

When you wake up again, your back doesn’t ache like it should, and there’s a comforter you don’t remember getting. You peer tired eyes over to the window allowing sun inside, and recognize it as the one from your room and not from the lab. You sigh and just hope that Steve had taken your advice at some point before moving you back up here. 

***

Another lead had ended in nothing useful. All you’d gotten out of the man was a name - a name you’d already checked and rechecked again. Out of sheer annoyance you had considered murdering the man who’d dashed all hope that youd’ finally gotten somewhere. 

“ Valeria?” You mutter. “She was nothing-” nothing but a  _ figurehead.  _ You groan, kicking the door to your bedroom open angrily. Steve had left you to your own devices when he’d glimpsed just how angry you were at the whole situation. The door bounces off the wall, and you care so little that you don’t even check to see if you made a dent in the plaster. You worm your way out of your sweaty suit by unzipping it and wiggling your hips. It takes two steps to get both legs down to the calf, and then two more to get it completely off. You spin around to kick your door shut, laying your rifle down on the lofted table beside the door. You wrinkle your nose at the sticky feeling of your underwear from all the sweat. You peel the bra from your skin and toss that on the floor, followed quickly by all the rest of your remaining clothes. A shower later has you feeling slightly less defeated, but crawling into bed does you absolutely no favors. 

You almost, for one fleeting second, forgot how sitting in silence staring at the ceiling lets every persistant little embarrassment, failure, and insecurity creep in. And for one second, the world seemed okay. You let your eyes close, curling around the comforter in attempts to sleep off your funk. 

_ Except that Bucky isn’t here.  _ You sniff. 

_ And I don’t know when I’ll get him out.  _ Another sniff. You feel like a failure. You can’t seem to get a grasp on anything worthwhile in this hunt for Bucky’s salvation. You want to help him  _ so damn badly  _ but everything you try is a dead end. You don’t even know where to look, how to start. HYDRA’s not exactly something you can just go google. Every tiny bit of information has to be pillaged for, and all the work which goes into scavenging enough to follow a lead is wasted when it doesn’t pan out. They’re tight lipped about The Asset. They certainly had a very good strategy not only to keep anyone from replicating the process, but to keep it’s unfortunate participants on a permanent leash, no matter how long or short that leash may be. Your heart absolutely  _ aches  _ for him. And you kick yourself for feeling so strongly about something you can’t help. 

You toss over to another shoulder. 

_ You’ve done your best.  _ You try to tell yourself. 

_ You’re still trying to help him. You’re still working toward that goal. _ You toss onto your back, wrenching your eyes open to stare up at the ceiling. 

_ Why can’t you do anything right? You might as well not be here at all.  _ You gnaw on your bottom lip, resisting the sting in your eyes. 

If you can’t even find your missing little brother, confront your crazy mother, or get a goddamn night's sleep, how are you supposed to be of any help in something as complex as Bucky’s situation? 

You groan, throwing yourself on your stomach to grasp at the phone on the bedside table. You check the time. 

3:30 am.

When had you even gotten in? You’re not sure. 

The comforter seems stifling, and even after your shower you’re starting to sweat. You still, trying to calm yourself enough to try and sleep. You want to wake up refreshed tomorrow. You want to rest enough so you feel like a productive part in your job. Your seeming eternal zombified state is starting to eat at your nerves just as much as your circulatory investigation. You wrinkle your brow in frustration. 

A loud breath exudes from your lungs and you throw the comforter off in a fury. You ignore how it folds onto the floor as you snatch your hoodie off of the desk chair and storm out of the room. Maybe you’re too close to this. Maybe you shouldn’t be working so fervently when everything makes you emotional. 

You descend the spiral staircase and refuse to look at the inviting elevator as you turn into the fork and head for the kitchen. A few angry moments of rummaging through the cabinets for a clean teakettle and leftover chamomile later, you cross your arms and settle to watch water boil. The fatigue is so prominent in your bones. Why can’t you just sleep? 

You try to run through calming moments. After a few seconds of searching, your mind lands on one in particular. 

_ “We can’t do this, doll.” He murmurs. You heard what he said, but his hand doesn’t move away from your stomach, it instead smooths your shirt out all the way up beneath your breasts. He slowly inches back down, cocking his wrist to brush his fingers just above the gentle slope heading toward your pelvis. You run a nail up his forearm, basking in the attention. He doesn’t seem too inclined to stop, despite what his words say.  _

_ “Can’t do what?” You needle, tracing the smooth dip in his forearm with your thumb. It’s bizarre how just the line of his arm shifting beneath the skin is so captivating. It twitches with his wrist as he pulls his hand back up to your ribs, tracing each divot. Your lips suddenly feel so dry; you dart your tongue out to wet them. Bucky’s sigh is suffering, restrained. His thumb brushes over the hollow separation of your ribs and your eyes flutter shut. You could stay here forever. Just like this on the couch with him, head in his lap and his hands all over you.  _

_ “You know.” He states without elaborating. He’s right. You do know, but you don’t understand his reluctance. You just accept it.  _

_ “I’m not asking for anything.” You say, brushing the back of your knuckles over his chest. “We can stay just like this.” It’s a peace offering. You know what you want. You know that he wants it too, but he won’t indulge. Maybe he isn’t ready, maybe he isn’t comfortable. Either way, you’re not going to rush it. Bucky will decide when he’s ready, and you’ll still be here. You hear him blow out a heavy breath - he’s unsure, nervous.  _

_ “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.” He murmurs again, weaker this time. You drop your hand to the back of his. “I don’t know if - if I’ll ever-”  _

_ “Not flinch when I try to kiss you?” You supply it easily. You know where he’s going with this. And you don’t care. His arm trembles beneath you as if he’s surprised you stated it so openly. Was he so insecure about this? You suppose you can’t be surprised with what he’s been through. He’s probably insecure about everything. “I don’t care, Buck. I’m not expecting you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.” He chuckles mirthlessly, brushing his hand over your body till he draws a thin line beneath your jaw.  _

_ “That’s not the problem.” He murmurs. The edge in his tone softens when you crane your neck open for him, nearly preening. “You have no idea how much I want you.” The words settle right in your core, warming you from the inside out. “I just don’t think -” You grasp his hand, stopping the gentle touch against the supple skin of your throat.  _

_ “We don’t have to go there, yet.” You assure him. “We can stay just like this, just like I said.” His beautiful blue eyes seem to relax when they lock with yours, and you can make out the barest trace of gratefulness in them.  _

_ “I don’t deserve you.” You disagree, but deign not to do so out loud as you grin up at him.  _

_ “Must be your lucky day.” You murmur back, lacing your fingers with his. You tuck his hand beneath your arm and roll over onto your shoulder, curling up with him. Bucky’s metal fingers brush your hair from your neck and you drop your shoulders as a familiar ease settles between the two of you.  _

_ “More like lucky year.” He retorts dryly, draping the blanket you’d discarded back over you. You just smile because your brain is far too tired to come up with anything clever to say back. You fall asleep there on him, clutching his arm to your chest almost protectively.  _

The memory makes you smile, especially when you remember Steve walking in the living area the next morning, startling at the sight of you two. You’d pressed your finger to your lips, shushing him silently so as not to wake Bucky because it’s the first you’ve been up before him and you didn’t want to spoil it for him. Steve had just smiled at you gratefully, taking the liberty to turn back around and shut the door. 

You’d kept your relationship with Bucky simple, but in doing so it’d evolved into something not so simple at all. At this point, you don’t even care what you meant to him; whether you were just a girl to him, or something more, you just want him back. You want him safe, you want him to know that it’s going to be okay no matter what his doubts. It’s so stupid, you shouldn’t be  _ this  _ hung up on a boy, of all things. Your brother would have scolded you big time. A smile creeps up at the thought of that boy, all smiles and messy hair. You miss him, too. It seems no matter what you try, you always end up alone. No matter what friends you make, what family you adopt, they always abandon you in the end. 

Just like Bucky has. 

But you know that this isn’t about you. It’s about his own demons. It’s about that bruise on your throat, persistently marring the pale skin. It’s about how his mind betrayed him. You get it. 

But the isolation feels personal. Oh, does it feel personal. 

Your teakettle starts to squeal, and before it gets too loud you take it off the heat, pouring it over the bag in your mug. It takes a few seconds, but the water starts to go brown, and you sigh at the soft smell of chamomile and lavender wafting through the kitchen. You move to dig through the fridge for the lemon juice to perfect the brew. You sink down in the couch to nurse your tea while dwelling on memories that had taken place on this very couch. 

_ “Come on,” he groans, “You can’t be serious.”  _

_ “I can be!” You insist. “Only sometimes. On special occasions with days that don’t end in y.” It’s clear that Bucky’s never heard this phrase before as he squints at you for a split second before understanding dawns in his eyes.  _

_ “So, never.” You grin at him, tipping your glass his way.  _

_ “Guilty.” Your grin seems to be infectious because his lips twitch up into that cocky smirk you’ve begun to get familiar with. It’d be a lie to say that you don’t feel a tad bit special to see it. “Come on, some twenty first century culture should be good for you.” Bucky rolls his eyes, setting his half drunk tea on the coffee table.  _

_ “Alright, alright,” he concedes, “I’ll humor you.”  _

_ “Okay, good. I’ll tell you an expression from now and explain it to you, then you tell me one you remember.” You thump his leg affectionately, before knocking back the rest of your tea. You set the mug aside and turn to face him, cross legged on the couch. Bucky spreads both his arms over the spine of the couch, and you ignore the urge to stare.  _

_ “So, whatch’a got for me?” He asks. You muse about it for a minute.  _

_ “I think one of the ones you’re going to hear be made fun of the most is YOLO.” You say. It’s a good starting place.  _

_ “Yo-low?” He repeats, confused. You nod.  _

_ “Yeah -- it’s an acronym for ‘You Only Live Once.’ Thanks to the internet it’s been used and abused. Now it’s just something people say before they decide to go do something stupid or insignificant. Like shaving your head or something.”  Explaining why the internet ruins everything to a man who’s had almost no exposure to such a thing is a little difficult, but he nods slowly, as if he’s trying to grasp it.  _

_ “Okay. That makes no sense.” He admonishes. You snort.  _

_ “Well, we of this century have a weird sense of humor.”  _

_ “You’re tellin’ me.” He shakes his head, but seems unperturbed. “Alright, so, my turn.” He takes a minute to think on it. “Used to be, we’d say we were goin’ on a bender.” He says, brows furrowed as if he’s trying to recall exactly the connotation of it. “It meant to go on a drinking spree.”  _

_ “Yeah!” Excitement lit up in your eyes, because  _ you know that one!  _ “We still use that now. Usually in the past tense, and usually with a terrible hangover.” Bucky winces, as if that is a pretty fresh memory for him, but grins despite it.  _

_ “Yeah, that sounds right.”  _

_ “Ok ok, so L-O-L is one now. It means ‘laugh out loud.’” You don’t take the time to explain that no one is really laughing out loud when they say it, because you’re not quite sure how to. “You’ll see it a lot over text messaging. If someone says it out loud to you in casual conversation, though, take that as a sign to walk away.” Bucky hums in acknowledgement.  _

_ “As if anything anybody says in this generation is gonna make a lick of sense to me, anyway.”  His remark is almost snide, you’d say. You puff your cheeks out at him.  _

_ “ _ Please,”  _ you drawl, “you can understand me just fine.”  _

_ “Right, doll, ‘cuz I got an inclination to actually listen with you.” It’s just a playful jibe, but you fight a flush anyway when he says it. In spite of that betraying red dusting your cheeks, you cross your arms.  _

_ “Well listen good then, Mista Barnes,” you mock the typical New Yorker accent to the best of your ability, “Nobody calls their girl ‘doll' anymore.” You scrunch your nose up when he chuckles.  _

_ “‘fraid I can’t seem to kick that habit.”  _

_ “I definitely noticed.” You nudge his hip with your knee as if to punctuate it. “Does that make me your girl, baby?” You snuggle a shoulder up to him as a joke. Bucky rolls his eyes at that, but doesn’t decline the assumption. Somehow, that makes you just a little giddy.  “Good,” an affirming nod, “so I can call you all the 21st century pet names now, like ‘the bae’.”  _

_ “What the hell is ‘the bae?’”  _

_ “It’s argued to mean ‘before-anyone-else’ even though that’s a load of garbage. It’s a fucking trashy nickname. Like--”  _

_ “Sweet cheeks,” he supplies. You try and hold it in, but your snicker eludes your efforts.  _

_ “Yeah, Buck. Like sweet cheeks.” The name is just absurd to you, but of course, the bae is probably equally as absurd to Bucky. “Or Stud muffin.” You add with a giggle. Bucky seems far more familiar with these little nicknames, because his response is quicker than the previous ones.  _

_ “Sweet cakes,” you raise your eyebrows, “sugar, fox, dish, dollface --”  _

_ “Wait,” you interject, “dish?”  _

_ “Well, yeah.” He says as if it’s the most natural thing. “It means you’re a looker.” The man ghosts a hand over your shoulder, stopping before he hits the soft flesh below your sternum. “I’m sure you’ve got an equivalent now.”   _

_ “Yeah,” you snicker, “beef cake.” The look Bucky gives you is absolutely disbelieving.  _

_ “Beef cake?” He looks like he wants to scoff, but is too disgusted to do so. You snicker.  _

_ “Oh, I have so many more: sugar lips, snookums, cuddle bear, love muffin -”  _

_ “You all are  _ terrible.”  _ His horror is completely evident. “I’d hate to hear what you call your women if this is what you have for your men.”  _

_ “I’ve always been a fan of babygirl myself.” You snicker. “I’m just kidding Buck, pretty much none of those are remotely common.” You definitely plan to bring up the love muffin one again later, though, since it got such a rise out of him.  _

_ “Babygirl is not too bad,” he hooks a knuckle beneath your chin, and you allow him for just a moment to guide it where he wants. “It’s pretty cute.” Smiling softly, you tilt your cheek into his palm when he spreads it open.  _

_ “We didn’t get everything wrong in this decade.”  _

_ “No,” he agrees, “certainly not.” Something tells you that he has an unspoken ‘it definitely didn’t get you wrong’ lingering at the edge of that sentence, but you don’t need him to say it to know. You turn to press a chaste kiss to his palm in response, ignoring the battle with longing he's fighting in his eyes.  _

You smile at the thought of that one, in particular. It had been the first time Bucky had really opened up all the way...or at least all the way for Bucky Barnes. 

Boy, are you smitten. It’s so clear, you don’t know how you even thought that it could just be simple between you two. You snort at yourself, amused that you thought you could get away with this. Taking a sip of tea, you pull the blanket from the back of the couch to swaddle around yourself. You’d wanted it to be simple, but if there’s anything that Bucky Barnes  _ isn’t  _ it is simple. He’s complex. He has a lot of problems, a lot of feelings, and a lot of issues. You are willing to wait for him, just as you’d said, but in all honesty pretending that you didn’t harbor those feelings was a stupid decision. You doubt, though, that he missed it. 

You lay down on the couch, finding it to be far more comfortable than your bed was.  __ Maybe, here, you can finally get some rest. You breathe out a slow breath, tugging the blanket over your shoulders as you lull yourself to sleep with thoughts of the very man causing your insomnia. 

 

***

When things with the remaining Avengers get rough, you head down to the lab to talk to Bucky about the turmoil they’re all in. When Steve gets too worn down to do much more than accept the food T’challa staff set out for him, you head down to the lab to talk to Bucky about how much of an idiot he is. When you just need some company who won’t judge you for your  chronic isolation and loneliness and general dry humor, you head down to the lab to talk to Bucky. Soon it becomes a rather guilty pleasure to have chatting sessions with the silent Winter Soldier during his dormancy. It becomes such a habit that you actually feel bad about not visiting him at least twice a week which you mentally kick yourself for every time the pang in your chest resounds. Twice a week turns into three times, then four, then five. It was working out for you, honestly. Bucky was good for venting to, and he was great for providing much needed thinking time and consideration of everything going on around you. It’s nice to just have a place of comfort to go to, especially since you have nowhere else to go. 

“Hey, saddle up.” Steve says with a smile as he pats your shoulder. you turn from the book you’re reading, arching a brow. “I got a lead on a HYDRA agent.” He jogs over to the kitchenette and tosses you an apple from the fruit bowl. You snatch it from the air like it’s second nature, staring at Steve in total shock. It’s been...nearly a month. You’ve both been looking for leads relentlessly. you made effort to exchange notes at least twice a week, but it didn’t seem to matter what solo missions, joint missions, or library databases you hacked; none of your leads ever panned out to anything fruitful. Most of it could be surmised to a question’s answer leading to thousands of more questions. Often names were buried under extensive subterfuge and dissolution. 

“You think it’s worth checking into?” You ask, crunching on the apple as you toss your book onto the coffee table. Steve pats the counter excitedly as he grins,  bouncing up onto the balls of his feet.  He obviously feels good about this one.

“Worth a shot?” He asks hopefully, though the both of you know it’s not even remotely a question. You’ll check into everything you possibly can to try and get Buck out of that prison he’d locked himself into. 

“I’ll go suit up,” you agree. The grin on Steve’s face even manages to give you  a shred of hope in your heart. 

After the pair of you gather their supplies and suit up for a stealth mission, you head out into the snowy hills of Germany. The flight only took a few hours with Steve at the helm and you  in the cockpit staring at the seemingly pillowy clouds below which are set against a dreary grey landscape. Sam and Scott came along, and the Ant- man chatters animatedly to Sam in the back of the jet, babbling on from subject to subject as the man in question just stares out the window with an unmoved expression. After you’d gotten into position you and Steve scout out the terrain below while hiding up on a craggy cliff dusted with a fresh coat of snow. Sam and Scott scout the forest for threats in opposite directions as you and steve settle into position. Steve’s got a white suit on to blend in better with the snow, and you’re adjusting with your  cream.  You set the sniper rifle stand into the snow and click the gun into place.  Peering through the scope offers a clear.view of the land below.  

Steve had gotten wind of a lead set in the forests of Germany. Supposedly there’s a covert HYDRA base nestled in these hills, and his coordinates led to this small cabin set alone for miles and miles. The yard around it looks fairly ordinary. A single stand of wood sits aside the window on the left side of the house. From here you can make out an axe stuck in a stump, a shovel leaned up against the wall, and a gun right beside that. You furrow a brow at the thought of someone leaving a rifle unattended. Who in their right mind? Noting that there’s no car out front, you surmise that there’s probably no one home.

“Don’t shoot to kill, remember we’ve got to interrogate them.” Steve chides, resting his chest on his shield so he doesn’t have to get wet. Your suit has been proofed for water resistance with the thought of this very situation in mind, so all you feel is the horrible chill creeping in through the fabric. The chill is indeed difficult to cope with, but you shrug it off along with the horrible migraine throbbing in your brain. 

“I know, Steve.” you intone, adjusting the rifle. “I’m not shooting on sight; we may not even be in the right place. Which is why you’re going in while I stay up here for your protection.” A sidelong glance his way reveals a smirk curling at the edges of his mouth. You can hear the “atta girl” he’s keeping to himself. He knows you hate when he says that, but he insists that it’s a habit from the society of the 40’s. You still berate him for it anyways. “Looks like no one’s home anyways.” Steve nods in agreement, crossing his arms beneath him. A somewhat comfortable silence falls between you, achieved only because you are working together to help the object of both of your affections. Steve takes a deep breath and then blows it back out, gazing down into the valley. A small smile ghosts his lips as he gets lost in his own thoughts. 

“You know, you’ve been spending a lot of time down in the lab.” He starts, not deigning to glance at you . You sniff, refraining from commenting as you adjust your sight. You know it’s not, but the statement nearly seems like an accusation. Steve falls silent another time before picking up again. “I’ve heard you.” Your gaze snaps to him, your pulse spiking when you think of all the prospective things that he could have eavesdropped on. Your time with Buck was meant to be sacred; and you’ll dare say it’s become an intimate affair. You can say whatever you want to him because he won’t ever answer. It’s like having a breathing diary; a person you can talk to without any repercussions. But, a small voice in your heart tells you that’s not the whole truth. You decide to ignore it in favor of licking already chapped lips. When had Steve even walked in? Why hadn’t you heard him? “Don’t worry, I wasn’t spying. I only stayed for a few seconds. I didn’t want to intrude.” He assures you, scratching the nape of his neck in nervousness. “You know that if you wanted to talk I could have…” He trails off, looking for the right words to say. “We could - I mean, only if you want, I know that we aren’t really close but I don’t want you to feel like you’re all alone in this.” You stare at him, hands slipping from the gun. Steve Rogers is a remarkable man, you think. Here he is, offering to keep you company when you know his suffering is just as painful as your own. Especially when you hadn’t yet extended the same courtesy.

“Are you sure it’s me who needs someone to talk to?” Steve chuckles, shaking his head. 

“Ah, yeah. Saw right through that, didn’t you?” He licks his lips, sighing once again. “But, seriously. The offer stands.” You purse your lips, rubbing the tense area between your temples and your forehead. You may have called Steve out on his own loneliness and isolation, but he wasn’t wrong about your demons. You are alone most of the time, and the person hearing most of your voice lately is the one person who can’t answer. Some shrink somewhere is psychoanalyzing your unhealthy mental and emotional state  and sorry coping methods as you and Steve mull over it, probably. 

“I just.” You don’t know how to say what you want to say to Steve. Or out loud. Or in your mind. Actually, you’re having trouble admitting it at all. Steve stares at you  for a long minute, and when you finally find the strength to bring your eyes to meet his you see nothing but understanding creeping into the edges. It unsettles you  as much as it comforts you . Your mouth goes dry and you swallow thickly. It feels as if you have just betrayed yourself with the way Steve gazes at you, like a private tidbit has just been wrenched from you for all to see. It’s as if your heart has been laid out in front of him for observation. Your chronic word loss only seems to deepen Steve’s understanding of what’s going through your brain. 

“I miss him too.” Steve murmurs. Denial is your first reaction. You open your mouth to answer, but your breath hitches. You hear the pop after the shuddering gasp escapes your lips. Immediately a white hot explosion in your chest follows. You cough, try to suck in a breath, but your lungs seem frozen and you just wheeze like a floundering fish laid on the hot pavement in the middle of summer. Steve’s screams your name in worry, but is gone from your side in an instant as another pop sounds off in what seems like the distance. It can’t be, though, because Steve’s crouching over you with his shield between you and the threat. You press a hand to your  chest where blood pours out hotly against the snow. Bile rises in your throat and you cough wetly, feeling thick liquid dribbling down your chin and bubbling in your mouth. Your heartbeat thrums so quickly in your chest, forcing the blood out faster and faster. Panic grips you  as the shock settles in. Something feels so incredibly  _ wrong.  _ You can’t move. You can’t see straight. You can’t breathe. You can’t do anything. You can’t even scream. You collapse in the snow, shuddering with the ache of a new hole in your body and mouth agape. You struggle to sit up. Your eyes swim with the motion and your muscles spasm. All those years of training, all those sleepless nights learning how to survive are lost over a stupid conversation about Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier in Cryostasis distracting you from hearing those footsteps in the distance. 

_ It seems like Barnes might just be the death of me  _ you think as your muscles give out and you collapse. You blood stains the pure white snow as frantic shouting echoes in your ear over the Comm. link. You  gaze slowly bleeds into ebony, and you pass out with blood on your lips. The last thing you hear is Steve’s voice in the link with the calculated calm of a soldier. 

“Hey…” A deep voice floats in and out of you  ears. “Doll, you gotta get... “ you recognize it. Dark hair flashes before your eyes, and steel blue eyes filled with an ease and familiarity you’ve not felt from anyone in a long time gaze down at you. A pat on your  cheek follows after and you  brows furrow. “C’mon - “ the voice changes, lighter, with more breathing room. You seethe as a searing throb sits somewhere from your shoulder to below you  breast. You flutter your eyes open with great effort. A tickle in your throat points toward a cough, but you fight it violently knowing just how bad it’ll hurt. You wheeze in a breath, but it’s hardly satiating with the way it rattles in your chest and the couch comes anyway. “Oh, thank god.” The illusion of long dark hair is muddled when you see cropped blonde. Steve breathes out in relief. “We’re headed back; Sam’s taking care of the agent who shot you.” He forces his arms beneath your figure and hefts you into his own. You would cry out in pain if you had the energy to do much more than moan in protest. Your vision bleeds another time, and you turn your head away from the oh so coveted warmth of Steve’s chest to spit the blood pooling in your mouth out. He takes off in a jog toward the jet- just as fast as he dares to go without jostling you  too much. You admire his effort, but each step still sends agony blistering through your left, upper torso. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be fine.” You curl into Steve as the loss of your life force leaves you shivering and freezing. 

“S-steve.” you cough again, wincing at the blood spattering his white suit. 

“Shh, hey,” he squeezes your arm, “don’t try to talk.” you grunt, leaning your head against Steve’s taut chest. You let out a wheezy breath and with it, your consciousness follows. 

***

He had no idea. Maybe it was the chaos of everything that had been happening, but he had no inkling that you had grown so close to Buck. Or how you felt about him. Bucky had never mentioned anything about you and he to him, but then again he and Bucky weren't the same people that they used to be back in the 40’s. They may still be best friends, but it’s not as if they indulge everything to one another anymore. Even so, he was pretty sure nothing more than a few late nights and many many cups of tea had transpired between the two of you. He likes to think Bucky would have said something. But then again, he does remember a couple of days when Bucky’s shoulders had set a little straighter, and the look in those stormy eyes wasn’t quite as crushing. He had never thought that the reason why was set so easily in front of him. Or that Bucky would have gotten involved in such a thing so quickly after his escape.  

But then again he’s fallen for girls over a lot less. And it seems that even though Bucky’s lost his womanizing nature, his charm is still, very much, in tact. Even if Bucky didn’t let on the same feelings, he can understand how this would have crept up on you. After all, you saw the best in Bucky just as he did. He knew as much when you’d failed to answer him in the snow earlier. He saw the reverent look in your eyes. He could see that you saw the real Bucky through those eyes. And he could also see just how deeply you felt about that man lurking beneath the surface. 

Your grip on his shirt when he settled into the jet bordered on rigor mortis, and he couldn’t bear to let you go with your skin so cold. Sam took the liberty of flying them home, the prisoner in tow. Steve did his best to stop the bloodflow and the chill in your bones in the meantime, struggling to keep you  alive. It became a mission. You had to be alive. You  _ had  _ to stay alive. Not only because you were a friend, but because you deserved to see the day that Buck gets out of Cryo, and he deserved a shot at your affections when he regains a semblance of that man Steve knows is still in there somewhere. 

*** 

You hear a heart rate monitor. Along with plenty of shouting. Your shirt is being ripped open, hands pin you to a table. Blearily, you see smears of slate grey and black. The familiar white ceiling tiles of the lab. When did you get here? You can’t actually make out what anyone is saying, it all blends together in one cacophonous blob of noise. Your head falls to the side, and you notice the pale hue of the Cryo tube not far away. Somehow, it makes all of this seem less frightening. Your breath leaves your chest and you fall back into unconsciousness again. 

***

You moan at the pain in your chest, and flop a heavy, lank hand up to feel around the area. A warm, calloused hand swats you away and your eyes turn to meet the blue green of Steve’s. 

“Morning,” he says with a soft smile, leaning back to rest his elbows on the arms of your  favorite rolley chair. You huff a sigh, dropping all effort to move back to you  chest. Now that you’re awake, the memory of what had happened slowly starts to sink back in. You and Steve in the snow, discussing Bucky while precariously avoiding actually verbalizing him. A gunshot wound you dearly deserved for not paying attention followed that shortly after. Steve carried you  back. Not so much of a blur anymore. You swallow thickly. “Doc says in a week or two you should be okay for activity.” He mentions it so sunnily that it almost makes you  feel better about the situation, but nothing really compares to how angry you are at yourself for letting your guard down on a  _ covert  _ mission. 

“You stole my chair.” Your voice is more of a croak than anything. You grimace at the dryness assaulting it. Steve snorts at you, crossing his ankle over his knee. 

“Yes, I’m sure you’re missing it so much.” He drawls at you. You blow a breath out of your  nose in the semblance of a laugh. 

“Am I detecting sarcasm in that tone, Rogers?” You throw your head to the side to look at him, smirking. Steve returns the expression in kind, reaching over to pat your leg. 

“Yeah, I think I’m getting the hang of it.” The earnestness in his tone is slightly endearing. Perhaps he should be kept in the dark about how to snark twenty first century style, else he’ll lose his sweety pie reputation. Instead of bantering further, you inhale deeply, scowling at the ache it brings with it. Steve leans forward in his chair to speak with you  more closely. “I’m so sorry.” Steve won’t look you in the eyes, and you know that there’s guilt pent up in them. It’s not his fault you got shot. It’s yours. You know trying to tell him that won’t end in anything fruitful though, maybe except an aching chest and throat. “They said the bullet grazed your heart. It’s a miracle that you’re alive.” A brush with death. You would have thought that it would be more...perspective inducing. But all you feel right now is gratitude and fatigue. Gratitude Steve was there to pull you  out and fatigue from...everything. 

“My heart, huh?” You rasp, reaching up to rub your temples. “It’s been getting pretty abused lately.” You chuckle mirthlessly as you gingerly rub your chest. Steve awkwardly refrains from commenting. The pain following your action is completely indescribable.  “Remind me never to get shot in the chest again.” you murmur blinking tiredly over at Steve’s concerned gaze. 

“I’ll try and bring it up next time we get snuck up on.” You try at a chuckle, but it’s just a forced breath that makes you woozy. You reach a hand out to Steve, and after a brief moment of hesitation, Steve takes it in his own and squeezes it tightly. The smile you offer him is also hesitantly returned. 

“I really appreciate it, Steve.” you whisper. “I’d have been a goner, you know.” His skin beneath you is so warm. Your mind flips back to his hand on your cheek, a hand you’d mistaken for Bucky’s even though that is entirely impossible. You’ve been so caught up in the loss of Bucky that you missed the one man who still sat beside you during the aftermath. And that man is a wonderful, respectable man. You shouldn’t have discredited him so quickly.  

“It’s my pleasure.” He replies without missing a beat, patting the back of your hand with his free one. You revel in the warmth he brings you; the chill from your blood loss and the snow from the mountains had yet to fade from your bones. “Get better quick, okay?” He stands. “I’m going to let you get some rest.” You curl your  arm protectively around your  chest as he lets go of you . 

“Could you please bring me another blanket?” you ask, giving him a hopeful look. Steve’s mouth twitches up into a smile and he nods compliantly. “I’m freezing.” 

“Give me a few minutes.” He replies, turning to leave. You watch his back as the darkness of the hallway swallows him whole. As promised, a few minutes of silence later has Steve back with the comforter from your bedroom in his hands. He spreads it out gingerly over you  form, and pats your  shoulder with a smile before he turns to leave for the night. You sigh, staring over at the Cryo tube mere feet away, and then the windows which have been closed for the night. Only the beeping of the heart rate monitor keeps you  company this time as you turn your eyes to the wall. You can’t believe that you’ve gotten stuck in this predicament. A bullet wound to the heart. Steve having to carry you  back to the jet? Ugh, talk about embarrassing. And almost dying? Honestly, you had known somewhere in your  brain that death was a very real possibility when you were lying there in the snow, bleeding out, but that wasn’t where your brain was at in the moment. You were mostly concerned with Steve, running after the man who’d attacked, and Bucky who might just be in that Cryo tube forever. 

Seeing all of the shit going on in your life really makes getting shot seem less like a huge deal, even though you know that it is a huge deal for someone who isn’t a superhuman soldier. Sometimes you wish you had the same abilities as Steve or Bucky. Their imperviousness really takes the edge off of battle, you’d imagine. But it’s never going to happen, anyway. 

You look over to the person who’d caused all this commotion. His long hair hangs lank at his shoulders, and his expression remains the sad, solemn one that you’d seen him go in with. You purse your lips huffing at him, steeling yourself to say the thing that you refused to say out loud to Steve earlier. It’s silly because Bucky can’t hear you. It’s not as if he’s going to raise an eyebrow at you dumbfoundedly and tell you just what he thinks of that. But it’s hard to admit all the same, and you’re annoyed mostly at yourself for thinking so. Yet, despite all of that you glare at his pristinely still face, and open up to say: “Perk up, Barnes. Steve and I are sitting here missing you while you spend all your time sleeping in that fuckin’ tube.” So maybe that was the best you could do for now. Maybe a real confession should be reserved for when there’s less irritation lurking beneath the surface and less pain radiating through your whole body.  

But you take careful care not to notice how the pain in your chest seems to ease just a little bit after the words leave your mouth. You turn your  head to face away from the man entirely as if in spite.

***

Steve comes to visit you pretty often as the next two weeks creepy by at the absolute slowest crawl. He indulges you with books and what little intel they’d collected from the man that shot you. Honestly, word of The Asset seemed to fall mum on most HYDRA lips. Your fears are starting to become reality as each new lead leads your little rag tag team in circles.  One day, when you’re well enough to get out of bed and stand by the window, Steve sighs exasperatedly. 

“I don’t know what to do now.” He admits, crossing his arms beside you as you both stare out the window. “I don’t feel like we’re getting anywhere. We’ve hunted down so many files, stormed so many HYDRA bases…” Steve worries at his cheek, shaking his head. “We aren’t getting anywhere.” You keep staring out the window, refusing to see the hopelessness in Steve’s eyes. In truth, this was your fear from the beginning. That you wouldn’t get anywhere. That Bucky’s condition was just something he’d have to live with until he learned to manage it. He’d made it clear just how little he wanted to do that when he went into Cryo in the first place. He’d need a lot of help, but you were so willing to give him that help. It seems, though, that he didn’t want it. 

“Steve.” You sigh in admission, leaning your head against the window. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I don’t think we are going to get anywhere.” The silence that follows your comment is heavy. 

“We have to.” He insists defiantly. You can feel his gaze on you, and you still take to staring at the pristine water outside. 

“Steve, if we can’t then we  _ can’t.”  _ You turn to look at him, shaking your head. “He may not be able to erase the programming they put in him. You know that is a possibility we might have to potentially face.” You sigh, leaning your head back against the glass and reveling in the chilliness of it. It’s a bit grounding to feel. “And Bucky might have to live with that, too.” You chide again, closing your eyes. 

“We can’t just give up.” Steve touches your shoulder gently. You open your eyes to look at him with an unmoved glance. “I know that it’s hard but there’s an answer out there somewhere.” You scoff, shrugging his touch from your shoulder. 

“Aren’t you listening? What if there aren’t any answers, Steve? Are you just going to leave him in there forever while you search till the day you die? Do you want someone to come along and shoot him in the brain like the others died while you’re out and unable to keep watch over him?” You shoot him a look. “I’m not saying give up. But I think that it’d be better to try and let him heal on his own. Nothing’s going to get better if he’s sleeping in that thing.” 

“That’s not what he wanted.” Steve reminds gently, but you just groan at his prodding. 

“No Steve. It’s not. Just like getting shot wasn’t what  _ I  _ wanted. But it happened anyway.” You turn away from him, staring at the brunt of this argument with his solemn face still frozen in time. You wince. “He has to face his demons before he can get better, just like the rest of us.” You’re too irate to stay in this room one second longer. Your legs are weak but you manage to storm past Steve, past Bucky, past your bed. 

“Hey, no, wait -” Steve begins to follow you, “You’re still hurt.” You shoot an annoyed glare in his direction, and he balks at it, stopping in his tracks. 

“I think I’ve sat around in this damn room enough, Rogers, thanks.” You spit. It’s not all Steve. It’s Bucky too. It’s rolling over for two weeks straight and seeing him still there, sleeping and not having to deal with all the problems you are. It’s laying helpless in your bed while all you want to do is get him out of that damned thing, but knowing that without the consent of Steve it would likely blow up in your face. Rogers is the one that Bucky entrusted himself to, not you. And you can’t force him to betray his friend like that unless he wants to do it himself. Your frustration has built up over the months of having Bucky willingly torn from you, and from Steve, and creating a nearly insurmountable rift between everyone. 

As much as you don’t blame Bucky for doing it, you also blame him for making that blasted choice. You strut into the elevator, arms crossed as you press the button to go up. Steve stares at you from his place at the window, worrying at his cheek as the doors slide closed and take you up to the ground floor. 

You turn from the elevator and wander into the halls of the T’challa residence. You don’t know where you’re going, you just know that you’re intent on getting wherever that is. 

It’s not until you happen upon Sam sipping at a beer on a couch, the only man who isn’t quite as sympathetic toward the whole Bucky situation, that you know you’ve found what you were looking for. He glances up at you over his beer, cocking an eyebrow. 

“Didn’t know you were up and around.” He offers. A peace offering when he sees the irritation in your features. You laugh mirthlessly. 

“I’m not. If anyone asks.” Sam mouths a silent ‘Ah’ as he makes room for you on the couch. You accept gratefully, gingerly leaning back into something that isn’t the dreadful operating bed down in the lab. Sam senses the tension in the air around you, and after a minute of silence, he sets his beer down on the table. 

“What’s eating you?” He asks. You snort, leaning your cheek against your fist. 

“Steve.” You admit flatly. It’s Sam’s turn to snort, nodding in understanding. 

“Bucky?” He asks knowingly. When you nod he laughs. “Yeah, tell me about it.” He shakes his head, giving you a look that says he knows your irritation intimately. Apparently Steve’s been fighting with everyone about Bucky, not just you. “Gotta admit, though, never thought I’d hear that coming from you.” The statement strikes you oddly for a moment. But you realize that you and Bucky’s friendship hadn’t exactly been a secret. Not only that, but you had been helping Steve pretty relentlessly. You suppose that your relation to the situation isn’t really all that surprising.

“It’s not like I’m telling him to give up on Bucky.” You say in your own defense. “I just don’t think this magical cure he’s searching for is realistic.” Sam looks at you in consideration, and you wonder why he’s letting you vent to him like this. You’re not going to push your luck, though. 

“I don’t think you’re wrong.” Sam agrees. “But he’s not going to give up on it-”

“I know. Because Buck asked him to.” The sound exhaling from your mouth is a mix of a scoff and a sigh. “I think he should stop worrying so much about disappointing his friend and start actually worrying about his wellbeing.” You pinch the bridge of your nose. “He’s not going to get better if he just sits in that tube for the rest of his life.” Sam purses his lips as a thoughtful expression consumes his face. He doesn’t say anything as he leans over to take a swig out of his beer. You slouch back into the couch, trying to ease the tension out of your shoulders but it’s difficult to relieve any stress when you are, in fact, still incredibly worked up. 

“I don’t think that’s an unfair assessment.” Sam muses, “as dangerous as Bucky is, if we’re talking the benefit of the man himself, I don’t think locking him up is a smart move either.” Sam swigs the rest of his beer and then sets the bottle back on the table. “Not to mention what it’s doing to Steve watching it.” You raise an eyebrow of the implication that Bucky is better off locked up for the safety of everyone else. You decide to let it drop, though, knowing that is the exact reason that Bucky found his decision to be a good one. You couldn’t disagree more, but that’s apparently not your place to say. 

“I don’t know how to get Steve to see that. He’s too caught up in trying to get the old Bucky back. That may not even be possible. And he can’t keep expecting him to just revert back to his old self because of some magic brainwashing cure I really doubt HYDRA left lying around somewhere.” Sam snorts at your monotone, lounging back into the couch. 

“I don’t know either. Steve’s pretty stubborn.” You groan. 

“Tell me about it, Wilson.” Sam takes a deep breath. 

“Tell you what.” He stands up from the couch, offering you a hand. “Let’s go for a walk outside. I’ll stay with you just in case you get too tired to keep going. I think it’ll be good to get you out of the house and away from all the shit going on for a little while.” You stare up at him for a moment, unbelieving that Sam is being so outwardly friendly to you, but honest to god nothing sounds better in that moment than getting out of the massive house. Despite that you don’t know much about Sam, and that the two of you have never been particularly friendly, you take his outstretched hand. Maybe, if you’re berating Steve about how he is handing things, you should try to start handling them better, too. And making a new friend could really go a long way in that regard. Sam gently pulls you up off the couch, and assists you through the halls so you don’t injure yourself further. The two of you find your way to a door leading outside, and Sam pushes the large, heavy glass out of the way so you can pass. You stop for a minute, though, feeling the miasma of hot, African sun mingle with the careful air conditioned climate inside the house that had nearly fooled you into forgetting where you were. Even inside, you can still breathe in the humidity that the open door is letting in. You step outside slowly, and take a deep, deep breath as the fresh air pools in your aching lungs. Sam follows you as you stretch your arms out as far as you dare with your injuries, sucking another deep breath in greedily. Sam leads you out from under the awning, hooking your arm through his own for much needed support. You legs are sore from disuse, and your knees threaten to wobble but you trudge on anyway, eager for something for the first time in an awfully long time. 

“You know,” Sam starts, staring at the ground to pick out the path of least resistance among the stepstones leading from the house to the large pool of water you’ve gotten so accustomed to staring at from the lab and your bedroom. “I feel really bad not coming in to check on you.” He admits it casually, but something tells you that he’s sincere, even if it sounds like he’s just trying to warm you to him. You decide to keep the conversation light hearted considering the topic from inside. 

“You sure you’re not just trying to get on my good side, Wilson?” You tease, and he chuckles, nudging you a bit to the left so you don’t have to climb over a rather impressively large tree root. 

“Oooh, you got me.” He laughs, “but in all seriousness. It’s partly my fault for not checking the closer perimeter.” The other half of his thought is clear. He wasn’t sure if you would even want to talk to him. Whether it’s because of Bucky, or because he thinks you might blame him for what happened is unclear, but the sentiment is not. 

“It’s nobody’s fault. Steve and I weren’t paying attention.” You supply in the silence, patting the arm you’re clinging to with your free hand. “If we’d been doing what we were supposed to I would have heard the guy walking close enough to shoot me.” Sam chuckles. 

“You and Steve up to somethin’ in the snow, hun?” You scrunch your nose up at him as you scoff, earning an amused hum from Sam. 

“Yeah well we couldn’t exactly get hot n’ heavy on the jet with you two in the back seat.” You play along, allowing the flat, dry sarcasm drip from your words. 

“Poor Tic Tac would have lost his mind, probably.”  You snort at that comment, noting how Scott still really hasn’t gotten that nervous babbling out of his system yet. His greenness doesn’t seem to be fading very quickly. You all still make him nervous, but you suppose in a good way. You and Sam walk in silence for a few minutes, and it’s by no means uncomfortable. The two of you both accept that neither has much to say to the other, and that’s okay. It’s the company you get the feeling that both of you needed. But when you round the bend of tall trees, and enter into a patch of vibrant flowers leading up to the water, you decide to speak again. 

“Steve was just trying to talk to me since I’d sorta been avoiding him.” You inform Sam as you guide the direction to the bank of the water. Sam lets go of your arm at your request, and you slowly lower yourself to the ground, cursing how the short walk already has you winded and your heart rate pacing faster than usual. You begin to roll up the hem of your pants. 

“What for?” He asks, plopping down beside you to join you at the waterside. You shrug, neatly finishing the first cuff just beneath the bend of your knee. Sam takes a much sloppier approach of curling and stuffing his hem instead of folding and creasing it like you had. 

“I didn’t know how to talk to him.” The water is pleasantly chilly when you dunk both your feet in. The sediment at the bottom is pretty smooth and supple, hardly a rock in sight. Sam nods in understanding, leaning back on his palms as he sticks his own feet into the water. 

“You got anyone back home?” He asks, veering the subject away from their current problems.  You take a deep breath, mulling over the broken pieces of what remained of your family. You were estranged from them now. Your choice in career path had sealed that deal. Shipped off to Europe when you were young, you’d made connections at a young age all over the world due to your mother’s insistence on learning the art of battle. You curiosity in it had driven you to go to training even while you were away, but you’d never expected the passion of yours would ever been fully put into practice. The young you didn’t understand that it wasn’t exactly normal to be brought up in such a fashion.  Looking back now, there are still so many webs that your family is caught up in, and so many secrets you fear you’ll never decode. A few short sob stories of your sister hating you and your brother missing you not being there with him later, you’d gotten a letter notifying you of your father’s passing while you were in Europe. When you’d taken it upon yourself to learn why your father had been murdered when you were young, the steps you took to get there had led you unsavory situations. 

You’d never gotten to the bottom of what really happened that night, nor why your mother was so mum on speaking about it, but when you’d turned on her to ask if she had a hand in it, it had seemed to be the last straw. You mother divorced herself from all contact or connection with you. And shortly after, when you went to break into your house and bust your brother out, no one was there. You’d wished that you’d have gotten to him sooner; you’d known he’d always been troubled and now he’s missing forever. You were his only real comfort in that house, and half the time you weren’t even there. It’s one of the many things that haunts you still, an eternal frustration that you can’t find them; you haven’t been able to track them down. 

There are secrets you still need to learn. But when the world had been at stake that was far more important than finding your shadow family. 

“Not really.” You shrug it off. “My family’s not to keen on seeing me ever again. You?” 

“Nah,” he brushes it off just as easily as you did. “My folks are long dead, now. No siblings.” Your mouth twitches up into something resembling a smile. 

“Guess we’re in the same boat.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, “I guess we are.” The two of you settle into a comfortable silence, and eventually you stoop back to lay flat in the dirt, not caring if your clothes get muddy. 

“When my chest is better, I want to go swimming in this water.” You say suddenly, throwing an elbow over your face to block your eyes from the sun. You allow yourself to relax, and your eyes slip closed as you bask in the feeling of your skin soaking up the sun’s warmth. 

“Oh, god no.” Sam’s horror doesn’t seem feigned. “You don’t know what kinds of scary ass fish are swimming down there.” You snort, not moving to from your position. 

“They can’t be any formidable than aliens flying through New York.” You point out, and at this Sam seems to take a pause. 

“I don’t know about that.” He mutters. “I don’t want an arapaima taking a bite out of my leg.” 

“An arapaima?” You ask, “how do you even know what that is?” 

“I’ve been watching a lot of  _ River Monsters _ .” At this, both of you laugh, and you kick your feet in the water a little. 

“Okay, Mr. Paranoid.” You mutter. “I’ll let you know if I find one swimming down there.”

“Please,” Sam scoots to join you on his back, “you don’t even know what they look like.” You scoff at him in mock offense. 

“You don’t know my life, Sam Wilson!” He laughs beside you. “I am a highly educated woman.” 

“Oh, yeah. So prove it to me. What is an arapaima?” 

“It’s a fish.” You state, and Sam blows out a puff of disbelieving air in response. 

“I hope your parents didn’t pay too much for your high education.” You giggle, reaching over to swat blindly at him. You make purchase with his ribs. He snickers in response. 

“A fish that is about as likely to be found in Africa as a piranha is to be found in Lake Michigan. They can get up from six to eight foot  _ and  _ around 200 to 400 pounds.” Sam whistles at that, and even though you’re not looking you’re pretty sure he’s shaking his head at the thought. 

“I stand corrected.” He muses, “I guess your parents must have paid just a little bit for your education.” You snort. 

“Well, no matter how much yours spent it looks like it would’ve been lost on you, pigeon brain.”

“Oh-ho!” Sam laughs, “I guess T’challa’s not the only one with claws.” A grin threatens to splinter your face. You’d almost forgotten how much you loved to banter with someone like this, and joke around all in good fun. With all the seriousness of what’s been happening, the UN trying to track them down, the split in the Avengers, the whole Bucky scandal, you’ve hardly had an ounce of lightheartedness in your life for the past month or two. Sam seems to be nothing but, no matter what plagues his mind. 

“You don’t know the half of it.” You smirk, and you know that Sam sees it by his snort. 

The next hour passed in more smalltalk, but eventually the two of you are beaten out of the water by the awful humidity catching up with you. He helps you get up, and guides you back to the house. You can still feel the sun in your skin when take the trek back to that fork in the hall. Your brain whirrs at the choice, left or right, Bucky or yourself, comfort or rest. You’re still annoyed. You will be, you know that, but despite yourself you once again turn left, and head for the elevator. The lab is quiet and empty except for its permanent resident. Just like old times, you locate your favorite rolley chair and roll it up beside Bucky’s confounded tube that deserves so much of your ire. You take a deep breath, and settle in. 

“Sam’s not so bad.” After a long minute that’s what you come up with. “Not as good of company as you, though.” You snort at that thought. When you’d first met Barnes, he hardly spoke to anyone. But he’d become familiar with you. Words turned into small twitches threatening to be a real smile. Hints at smiles turned into quiet chuckles and those turned into the allowance of you leaning against his shoulder, or him draping his non metal arm over yours as the two of you spoke about the parts of your pasts you cared to divulge. He couldn’t share much because he couldn’t remember, but he indulged you with your tales of sneaking up on the roof for late night drinking at boarding school at an age far too young to recognize the meaning of the word ‘hangover’, or getting into fisticuffs, or late night excursions with boys sneaking into the city pool. Barnes had informed you that there was a time when he was just as daring and reckless - or at least he thinks so. He said that Steve could confirm that suspicion, but you didn’t really need it confirmed. You could easily pick out the mischief in his eyes when you and he would find the energy to banter, or the devilishness in that shit eating smirk when he said something to make you flush. 

Oh, yes, you certainly believed he’d had plenty of women on his arms when he was a young man.  

“You’re a real ass, Bucky Barnes.” You say. “A real ass.” You eyes scan his still face for another countless time. “I guess that’s the trick, though, isn’t it?” You thunk your head against the glass of his tube exasperatedly. “The fact that I love you anyway.” 

***

Eventually, when the rattling ache in your chest starts to subside, you are up and about a lot more often. You still have to take the training really easy, and honestly all you’re allowed is to do a light, low intensity jog, and practice your knife throwing skills. For obvious reasons, you still are not allowed to spar with anyone, or work on a dummy. That will still have to wait, unfortunately. 

But after your jog in the morning, you are inside the training rooms, throwing knives at targets. Your aim hasn’t diminished over your inability to perform. The knife you just loosed with a snap of the wrist lands right in the heart, where you’d intended. You breathe out a huff through your nose, picking a slightly heavier weighted knife and throwing it with the artful snap of your wrist. It spirals straight into the dummy’s head. You aim for the thigh next, practicing for if you just need to maim someone and not kill them. That one flies true also. You move to pluck them from the foam dummy, and take your place back where you’d started. Placing the knives on the table beside you neatly, you start over. 

The blade lands right in the same groove of the skill your previous throw had created. You pick up the next knife, and aim for the heart. 

It slides satisfyingly into the same groove, once again. You line up to throw the next knife, but a low whistle shakes your concentration. You drop the knife to your side, turning to see Sam in his workout clothes, arms crossed as he watches you practice. 

“Remind me never to be on  _ your  _ bad side.” You snort at him, turning back to the mannequin. Just to show off, you throw the knife to smack right next to the one protruding obscenely from the heart of the dummy. There’s something so undeniably sinister about looking at it, and then something even more insidious about the fact that you had been the one to put it there. Sometimes, you forget that you’re no longer a sweet schoolgirl taking self defense. You’re lethal. 

“I’ll be sure to mention it next time you try and stump me in a pop quiz about deadly fish.” Sam smirks, gesturing toward your knives. 

“May I try?” He asks. You acquiesce, stepping aside. 

Sam throws the first knife and barely manages to clip the dummy, and you refrain from commenting as he reaches for the second knife. He’s about to loose it, but the two of you jolt as the electricity fizzles out, and a deafening alarm sounds throughout the residence. You and Sam both share a knowing look of alarm. Your eyes snap to the far window wall; soldiers with heavy artillery march toward the window, and Sam flips the knife around for you to grab. 

“Let’s go, you’re in no condition to fight yet.” You take the knife from him and reluctantly stow it away. As much as you want in on this action, you know that Sam’s right. You don’t have a death wish. 

“You need to go find Steve.” You chide, taking one other knife and stuffing it into your waistband. You take the other knife and stow it in his hand for protection until he gets his falcon wings. 

“ _ I _ ?” He asks, following your hurried steps from the room. “What happened to ‘we’?” You shake your head, but before you can answer the glass shatters behind the two of you. You yank Sam through the doorway and haul the heavy metal door shut. 

“I’ve got something to do.” You explain, your mind flitting back to the helpless man in the glass tube, sleeping. A sitting duck. An easy target. And he’s probably why these people are here. Sam takes one good look at your face and then reads your mind, sighing as he shakes his head. 

“The Super Soldier can handle himself right now. You’re crazy if you think that I am leaving you to get all the way down there on your lonesome.” Bullets ricochet off the metal door you’re both standing in front of. You both flinch away. 

“I’m not going to argue, but we’ve got to  _ go.”  _ With that you turn around and you take off. You know the way to the lab by heart now, seeing as you’ve been there an embarrassing amount of times. Sam’s footsteps echo behind you, and it’s not long before there’s a loud bang in the distance. They’d gotten through the door. You take a fast turn. Bucky’s on the other side of the residence. You have to get there as fast as possible. Left, right, winding staircase -- 

Soldiers. You skid to a stop, throwing a knife at one of the two. The other has his gun trained on you as the knife buried in the nape of his friend’s neck. Sam nearly jets in between you and the gun, slamming his forearm into the muzzle and grabbing it from the man as if he were taking it from a child. He shoots the man, and as soon as you know he’s dead you dart forward toward your destination, snatching the knife without missing a beat in your steps. Sam dutifully follows you, gun in tow. 

The lab is up ahead, but you hear a multitude of footsteps behind you. You glance over your shoulder at Sam. He darts a tongue out to wet his lips. 

“Go, go!” He shouts. “I’ll defend the elevator!” You don’t have time to argue, and you dart into its open doors. Thumb jammed into the button for the basement floor, you bounce on the balls of your feet. Your heart thunders in your chest, hurting so badly with overexertion. Your breath comes out in seething hisses, and you wished to god that you hadn’t taken that run this morning. The thought flies out of your mind so fast when the doors open for you, and you beeline straight for the control panel of the Cryo tube. Rounds of bullets patter above you, and you worry for Sam’s safety. But if you can get Bucky out he can be of help where you can’t.  You stare at the controls in complete confusion, not knowing what any of these scientific terms mean. But there’s a big, large button that you’re willing to bet on. So you press it. 

There’s a ding, and you whirl around, eyes darting to the elevator. A lone soldier stands in the doorway, gun pointed at you threateningly. 

“Step away from the target.” He orders. Your nostrils flare as you attempt to think of a way out of this situation. You  _ will  _ fight him to survive, even if that goes against the doctor’s orders. But you definitely can’t get shot again, and you can’t get punched, kicked, or hit in the chest if you can help it. 

You also can’t step away from Bucky. You stand your ground, devising the best way to approach this situation. He has you at a disadvantage. He’s got a gun. You have literally brought a knife to a gunfight. You’re ill, and you have a target to protect. Your best chance is to catch him off guard. 

“Step  _ away  _ from the target.” He says it forcefully this time. Steam billows behind you as Bucky’s Cryo tube slowly starts to depressurize. 

“As if I’d make it that easy for you.” You snark, smirking at the man. He cocks his gun. 

“Last chance to step away unharmed.” He warns you. You don’t give him a moment to adjust. You lunge for him, and as he pulls the trigger, you’re ducking to the floor, swiping at his knees. He moves to deflect you with his rifle, but you duck out of the way, swinging your elbow back into his solar plexus. He wheezes and jars for a minute, but you’ve got no ability to take advantage of it as your chest throbs and you wheeze as your heart seems to constrict in your chest. Your breath hitches and you attempt to regain your posture in time, but the soldier is less impaired than you are. His knee moves up to slam into your chest and you jerk sloppily out of the way to protect the vulnerable area. To compensate for the misstep, you slam your forearm into his rifle, using your momentum to knock his grip. 

He catches onto your erratic movements to avoid getting your chest hit, so you’re not able to grab the gun as he drops it from his grip to try and land the heel of his palm to your sternum. You twist out of the way and pivot, sliding the knife from your yoga pants and slamming it into the man’s ribs. With you so off balance, you’re not able to get it between his fourth and fifth rib, but as it slips through his shirt and into his skin, it’s enough to slow him down a fraction; particularly as you yank it out of him when your turn around to regain your footing. He seethes as he stumbles back from you, and you take that relapse to get into a defensive stance. His hand darts to his rib and you want so  _ very  _ badly to chance a glance behind you to see just how far along the whole defrost setting on Bucky’s Cryo tube is, but you can’t afford the distraction. He descends on you too quickly for that. The soldier throws himself at you, aiming once again for your chest. You slide back and deflect that with your forearm, but he just brings his other hand to try again, and then his leg, followed by his hand, then the other leg, and they keep alternating like that and you’re absolutely holding your breath trying to concentrate enough to deflect all of them. You hear a click, and you gasp as he swipes at your legs. You jerk to avoid that, but his hand is moving too fast for you to doge well. You jerk at the last minute to try and avoid much damage as possible, but it still clips your sternum and a couple of your ribs. 

The effort not to scream is immense. In a last ditch effort you slam your knee upward to his stomach, and he stumbles back away from you quickly. You sputter, cough, your heart throbs in your chest and you feel like maybe you might just be going into cardiac arrest. What if you’ve begun to bleed again? You shake your head free of the panic a your cradle your chest. The man sneers at you as the blood starts to terribly soak his shirt. Maybe you do stand a chance. 

You’re in no position to go into offense, so you allow the man to come at you. You dodge his blows while keeping one arm firmly over your chest, much to the man’s chagrin. His agitation gets the better of him as his hits become sloppy and easier for you to slip between. When you finally see an opening, you take your knife and slam it into his shoulder, effectively deadening one of his arms. He roars in pain, but throws a last ditch punch toward your vulnerable position. 

A chilly arm slips around your waist and you’re yanked out of the way. You whimper at the feeling; doing your best not to screech at the pain that blossoms from your chest all the way down to your core. The hit that was intended for you hits with a horrible, bone crunching clunk. You clutch the arm at your waist as both relief and anxiety shoots through you. You can’t turn to look at his face from the angle he is pinning you, but you can turn and see the soldier, or really what remains of him after Bucky’s metal arm reaches around and grabs the soldier’s neck. You are hoisted along as Bucky’s long strides eat up the floor between you two and the wall. He Drags the soldier with you, who grabs at his metal arm fruitlessly to try and get a breath. It’s nothing short of completely brutal as Bucky slams the man into the wall and his head thwacks against the hard tile of the wall. Bucky releases his throat while the soldier is stunned, and grabs at his skull instead, driving him further into the wall as his arm whirrs and clicks. Your heart thrums painfully in your chest and you double over his arm in pain, coughing. You’re too busy trying to keep the blood in your mouth to watch, but there’s a loud clattering noise and a thunk soon after. Your chest is heaving.

And behind you, so is Bucky’s. He doesn’t release you even after you are aware that the soldier is dead and you are out of danger. You clutch his arm, still cold from the cryofreeze. But oh, god are you happy to feel him against you again; see him  _ awake.  _

“Bucky,” you breathe. His eyes snap to you, so serious but so far from cold. “Thank god.” A whisper is all you can manage as that tickle in your throat kicks up again. 

You can’t stop coughing, and you know that it’s straining your already disrupted stitches. Blood spatters all over your arm as you try and cover your cough, and you can’t even begin to hide the horror from your face as you wheeze, and pull back to look at it. You can not only feel Bucky’s chest heaving,but his heavy gaze on your back. You stare at the little red droplets sprinkled on your arm as you swallow thickly. 

This is not a good sign. Slowly, Bucky’s heavy pressure against your stomach abates, and the sudden breathing room allows you to take in a deep breath to try and satiate your abused lungs. 

Malfunction. Another coughing fit. As soon as his arm leaves you, you’re sinking to the floor, coughing violently into your arm. Bucky immediately follows you, crouching beside your crunched form. A gentle hand at your back alerts you of his proximity, and as soon as you can get control of your lungs, you turn to look back to him with watery eyes. 

“What’s going on?” His voice isn’t something that you would quite call concerned. It bordered more on strategic, but the gentleness in his touch is enough to know that he’s concerned. You shake your head, swallowing the tangy taste of blood. Your lips are wet and you’ve got a feeling that it’s not with saliva. You rub the blood on your arm over your pants, and then wipe your mouth off on your shirt. 

“It’s -” you inhale sharply and wince at the pain in your chest. “I’m injured.” It’s all you can seem to get out. The look in Bucky’s eyes is unreadable as he looks down at you, but you can see the gears in his head turning. “You gotta go h-” your breath leaves you shakily as another throb knocks the breath out of you. “H-help Sam.” You finish, clearing your throat. Bucky brushes long dark strands out from his face as he wraps an arm back around you. 

“What are you doing?” You protest, but you’re too drained and burdened to actually fight him when he heaves you off the ground. “You can’t bring me w-with you. I’ll be in the w-” you suck in a breath as he fixes you in his grasp. “Way.” Bucky just grunts at you, squeezing your shoulder reassuringly with his metal hand. 

“Well I can’t leave you here, doll.” He says it as if her implication is the most absurd thing that he’s ever heard. “You and your favorite chair can’t have any more heart to hearts now that I ain’t in that thing.” The jolt that you give is far more painful than the coughing fit you’d just had. The implication of his statement literally makes you woozy. The last few months are laid out before you in abject horror, and you don’t even know how to respond to his comment. You glance up at him as your hands move to cup your cheeks. That sickening, self serving smirk creeps onto his face which is definitely  _ unfair  _ in every single way because you can’t even be mad about it since it looks oh so good on him. He doesn’t waste time rubbing it in, though. He heads for their only exit : the elevator. You just curl up into his chest, paralyzed not only in embarrassment but also sickening pain. He’s chilled from being in Cryo, but you can hear the steady, surprisingly fast thrum of his heart beneath your ear. Bucky steps into the elevator and gingerly stoops to place you behind the small wall created by the floor panel. You slump against the cold metal, shifting to let the corner of the elevator be your support instead of the man who’d been holding you. 

“Can you stay in this corner till I get back?” He manually scoots your legs up close to you. You know what he’s aiming for; if they don’t see you they won’t shoot at you. And until they regain control of the situation, that’s the best that he can do for now. You nod tiredly, hugging yourself as if the action would somehow keep you from falling apart because that’s what you feel like is happening. He pats your thigh affectionately, reaching above you to hit the next floor. You can still hear gunshots, so Sam’s not down for the count just yet, it seems. Bucky’s looming presence recedes as he stands, and the elevator lurches and heads back up to the next floor. 

Bullets unload as the doors open, and Bucky steps out into the chaos. 

“Oh, my  _ man!”  _ Sam exclaims excitedly. You are completely in the dark with what’s happening. You focus on steadying your heartbeat so maybe you can get it to stop throbbing so much as you listen in. Bucky doesn’t answer Sam, predictably, and all you hear for a second are strangled cries and thuds of bodies hitting the floor. Occasionally, you could make out Sam seething, or Bucky grunting as a fist no doubt lands on him somewhere. You wonder what it’s like getting out of Cryo and being expected to fight like that. Are his muscles stiff? Is he winded? Disoriented? 

It’s not even a full minute later when the noise quiets. 

“Where is she?” Sam asks harshly, as if accusatory. You still don’t move, just in case there’s someone in hiding watching the boys. “Is she okay?!” You hear Bucky sigh in annoyance, and you don’t have to see him to know what expression is on his face. 

“I don’t know if she’s okay.” He spits it, like he’s blaming Sam. You roll your eyes, knowing that both of them are probably bristling. “She said she was injured.” His voice gets a little distant, no doubt as he checks the hall. 

“Yeah, a bullet grazed her heart a few weeks ago.” Sam says, and you wince because you wish he wouldn’t have been so divulging. There’s a long pause, and then finally, you see Bucky’s solid black figure re enter the elevator. He crouches beside you, brushing stray hairs from your cheek. 

“You could have been more specific, sweetheart.” He mutters at you, coaxing you out of the corner. Moving is really difficult, so you don’t really resist or help as his arms circle around you and pull you into his now warmed chest. Your rest your cheek against him, scrunching your eyebrows together as you loop your hands around his neck.

“I don’t need your shit right now, Buck.” You mutter, which you know he’s rolling his eyes at. He doesn’t fight you as he pulls you back up and carries you out of the elevator. You close your eyes, inhaling everything about him; a mixture of mint and gunpowder and something undeniably clean. 

“You gonna make it, doll?” The concern in his voice is very real this time, now, you suppose, that the danger isn’t immediate. You turn your nose into him, letting out a shaking breath. 

“I don’t know.” You answer honestly. Because you really don’t. Your eyes are swimming, your chest is heaving to try and fill your lungs back up, but nothing is working on abating your shaking and panic. Much to your horror, Bucky starts to pry you away from him. A worried whimper escapes you as different, very unfamiliar arms hook beneath your knees and your shoulders. Opening your eyes makes your head spin, so you wrench them back shut as you’re moved.

“Take her somewhere safe, and try and keep her alive till we can get her to a doctor.” Bucky tells Sam sternly. The man clutches you close to him, but you’re reluctant to relinquish your hold on Bucky now that you’ve gotten it back. His hands move to the back of his neck where he coaxes your fingers apart. 

“Nono,” you whine, because in the midst of all these things swimming before your eyes, Bucky is the only thing that seems solid and comforting enough to hold you together. He rubs a thumb over the back of your palm as he sets both your hands in your lap. 

“Don’t worry,” he chuckles, “I ain’t gonna die on ya. I’m nowhere near done with you yet.” You open your eyes just enough to gaze at him, and he’s giving you the gentlest look you’ve seen on him yet. Without the stormy look in his eyes, and the near permanent scowl and hard lines on his forehead gone, you can almost see the boy he’d been before. 

“Alright, alright, lovebirds.” Sam chides, stepping away as Bucky snorts. “Let’s get a move on.” You wrench your eyes shut as you groan. Oh, you’re going to be sick. 

“She better be breathing when I get back, Wilson.” You note how Buck doesn’t really sound all that joking when he says that. You hear Sam scoff, but you can tell that Bucky’s already gone when he does it. 

“I know of a place.” Sam mutters to himself, and he takes off down a long corridor. His steps hurt, and you find yourself nodding off as the pain just becomes far too much to keep on bearing. You get moments of lucidity. Sam turning a corner. Sam bumping doors open with his hip. Eventually, he gets you to a bed, and very gingerly places you on the sheets, pulling the covers up to keep you warm. He stands at the end of the bed, staring intently at the door just in case someone happens upon their dark room out of all of the rooms in this giant facility. You hiss in pain as you adjust to the sheets. 

“Looks like you got your boy back.” Sam teases in a low whisper. You swallow thickly, licking your lips as you look for the right words. 

“Hardly my boy.” You mutter, sniffing. 

“I dunno.” Sam says slowly, “sounded awful determined to keep you alive.” 

“Ah yes,” you drawl, “common courtesy.” Your dryness makes the man snort, and you feel his weight sag against the footboard. 

“Why so pessimistic? I’ve never seen that guy be so nice to anyone.” If course, you don’t want to tell Sam your real mortification, especially now that the world has started to right itself now that you’re sitting still. 

“I like to call it practicality.” Your rebuttal earns an amused hum. “Wake me up when the danger gets here.” 

“That’s probably a good idea.” Sam agrees. All you’re doing is sitting in wait anyway, so you might as well try and gather your strength. 

 

***

Sam never wakes you up. Instead, a warm hand touches your shoulder. You wake with a bleary gaze, staring up at a pair of steel blue eyes. You don’t have the energy to smile, or else you definitely would. You might just be seeing things, but you could swear that his face is softening with utter relief. 

“You look rough, doll.” He murmurs. You grunt halfheartedly, letting your eyes slip back closed. Your brain searches for the last thing you remember. A dark room. Sam. This doesn’t seem right. 

“Sorry we aren’t all super soldiers with a healing factor.” You mutter at him. “Let me just get out of bed and go fix my makeup.” Bucky runs a calloused finger down your arm, absently drawing patterns against your skin. 

“I think you’re doin’ just fine without it.” He chuckles. “How are you feeling?” His insistent, but gentle tone rouses you once more. You force your eyes open, and you don't recognize anything but Bucky’s face. You take a moment to assess yourself. The horrible pain in your chest is now dull, and you are mostly just exhausted. You take in a deep breath and -- 

Very little protest. You let out a satisfied breath. 

“Peachy.” You mutter tiredly, drawing your gaze slowly over to Bucky’s face. You hear Bucky chuckle softly, and he leans against the guardrail on your bed. 

“You want me to let you sleep?” He reaches over to graze the back of your hand with just the very tip of his finger. You’d almost say it tickled, but mostly you felt comforted by something so simple and familiar. You moan in protest. 

“You already left twice.” You mutter accusingly at him. Bucky smirks, and the devilish glint in his eyes makes your heart flutter. For once, it doesn’t hurt. 

“Trust me, sweetheart, you made that plenty hard.” You groan, rubbing your hand exasperatedly over your face. 

“I can’t believe this.” Bucky is sinfully smug about this whole thing, and it’s murdering you in a bad way but not so nearly as much as it’s murdering you in a completely good way. “What do you remember?” It’s only fair that he indulge you, since you shamelessly and ignorantly told him basically everything that you could possibly have wanted to. Actually, you told him all that and then some. Bucky snorts. 

“ _ Your friend is stupid and I hate him _ ,” he recites perfectly for you. And then moves on to say “ _ Perk up, Barnes. Steve and I are sitting here missing you while you spend all your time sleeping in that fuckin’ tube _ .” You roll your eyes at him, despite the smile on your face. “You also told me I was an ass.” Bucky takes a moment to run his fingertips over your cheek as his smile softens. “Right before you said that you loved me anyway.”  You sigh in defeat, because that’s not at all how you wanted this to go down. 

“Well,” you murmur, “guess that the cat’s out of the bag.” Bucky leans up against the rails of your bed, smiling at you so genuinely that you can see boyish dimples crease in his cheeks. He looks good like that; it softens his roguish looks into something far more sincere. 

“Really, as much as I’m enjoyin’ you getting all bothered about it,” he brushes stray hairs from your cheeks, “this is honestly the first time I’ve ever come out of Cryo feelin’ like myself.” You search his eyes for something that betrays this as a joke, but there’s nothing there. He’s being sincere. He takes your hand and presses his lips to your knuckles. They’re so soft against your hand that you wonder how luscious they’d be on your mouth.“Thank you for keeping me here, in my own head.” You smile at him, dumbstruck when those little dimples of his seem to deepen at the action. 

“Pleasure to be of service, Sarge.” You are grateful, honestly, to know that maybe you made a new memory for him from all the bad ones. Bucky sighs,  holding your knuckles to his face. 

“I thought you’d have given up on me for sure.” He murmurs. You know to what he’s referring. He’s referring to that night he’d nearly killed you when his PTSD had consumed his mind entirely. You remember it so vividly. You had come in to check on him, but as soon as you wedged yourself through the door, the breath had completely vacated. You felt first hand what it was like to have that metal hand around your neck, and a knife to your side. You’d seen nothing but the soldier in his eyes that night, cold, calculating and focused. Focused on you. Focused on the curve of your brow, and the twitch of your mouth as you attempted to regain your breath. Focused so entirely on your face for all the wrong reasons. But when you stared back up at him without an ounce of fear in your eyes he had faltered. 

“I knew you were an ass, Barnes, but I never took you for a dumbass, too.” Your crack is an attempt to keep the mood light, and for the most part it works, but it doesn’t completely dispel the sadness in his eyes. “It’ll take a lot more than that to scare me off.” A breath leaves him, and something thoughtful crosses over his features. 

“I guess I underestimated you.” He muses. 

“It’s because you’re so old school.” You counter, rubbing your thumb over the back of his hand. “We ladies of the twenty first century can handle ourselves pretty well.” You huff, though, at your current predicament. “When we’re not getting shot in the heart, that is.” You add for good measure. 

“Speaking of.” He relinquishes your hand back and you lay it gently back over your stomach. “You need your rest.” Bucky sighs. “I’ll let you sleep.” The man stands up to leave but you wrinkle your brow. 

“Bucky?” It comes out as a plea when you didn't mean for it to.  Even you can hear the sad little desperation of it. The sheer patheticness is enough for him to halt in his tracks, looking over you with a puzzled, and stricken expression. “Stay.” You pat the bed for him. 

“Darlin’ I don’t think doc will approve.” He’s only half joking. But you can see the want in his eyes to stay.

“Fuck ‘em.” You mutter, wriggling over to make more room. 

“We ain’t gonna fit on that tiny little thing.” He protests still, seeming to think that you’re nothing short of completely ridiculous You stick your lip out in a pout at him. 

“Come on, Buck.” You whine. “You’re just makin’ excuses now. I know you’re more creative than that.” Bucky snorts, shaking his head. 

“You don’t know what’s good for you. I’m just trying to keep from hurting you.” He chastises you gently. 

“Yeah, except I’ve given you permission.” You joke, waggling your eyebrows at him. The filthiness of your joke is not lost on him as he half laughs, half sputters at you. “I take full responsibility for injuries received from prime cuddle times.” You counter. “Tell them I bullied you.” He sighs rather dramatically,leaning on your guard rails once again to kick his shoes off. 

“Not sure anyone’s gonna believe that, doll.” Bucky smirks as he very precariously crawls into the bed with you, adjusting so you’re lying mostly on top of him where you won’t fit so he doesn’t crush you. You scoff in mock offense. 

“Are you saying I’m not intimidating, Barnes?” The deep rumble of his chuckle is felt rather than heard, and you ignore the fluttering it sends to the pit of your stomach. 

“Well,” he says in your ear, “that’s not exactly what I’d say.” His breath tickles at your neck, and you relax against him, settling your cheek to his chest. 

“Good.” You murmur, feeling tired again already. But, seeing as you’re in some hospital somewhere, you’re not surprised. “Because that’s totally within my power.” You feel a hand card through your hair slowly, and then the short rise and fall of his chest beneath you. 

“Sure, okay.” He says in a flat, acquiescing tone. His metal arm gingerly wraps over your waist and you reach up to brush your fingers over the ridges of a feigned metal bicep. For so long, Bucky had been weird about his metal arm. He didn’t even seem to like when you acknowledged it, but eventually he’d allowed equal familiarity on both sides of himself.  

“How bad was it?” Your murmur. Bucky’s chest quivers beneath you as if the subject brought him great stress. His fingers twitch in your hair. 

“Darlin’, I almost lost my mind.” He whispers, clutching you as tightly as he dares. “You flatlined.” He states coldly, tucking your head beneath his chin. “We thought we lost ya.” The news shocks you, honestly. Impossibly, you get even stiller, the breath stilling in your lungs. Flatlined? You were dead? Your silence only seems to remind Bucky of the moment, because he holds you even tighter, tucking his nose into your hair.  You lick your lips, flattening your palm against his tight chest. 

“I’m too spiteful to die.” Of all things, James Buchanan Barnes fucking laughs; a real, genuine laugh that moves your figure on top of him with it. 

“Leave it to you to make a joke out of the worst moment of my life.” 

“Worst moment?” Your tone is teasing, but you’d be lying if you’re not a little gratuitously honored. 

“Maybe not the worst.” He admits. “But pretty high up there.” You crane your head around to look up at him, but he’s turned away from you, staring at the wall lost in reliving the moment of your death, however temporary. Soft brown stubble peppers the underside of his jaw, and creeps all the way to the top edge of his adam’s apple. You watch closely as it gives a little bob with his thick swallow. 

“I’m sorry.” He drags his hand up your waist, and if you weren’t so tired you’d wish the thin hospital gown were gone so you could feel it against your bare skin. 

“It’s not your fault.” His voice is so soft and sweet that you feel as though you could drown in it. 

“No, but I’m still sorry you had to endure it.” He sighs and very gently runs his fingers through a knot in your hair. 

“It’s okay now, sweetheart.” He murmurs. “You’re okay.” You aren’t sure if he’s trying to reassure you or himself that you are, in fact, breathing. 

“Promise me.” it comes out as a statement instead of a question. 

“Anything, dollface.” The homage to the era he hails from makes you smile. Even through all the shit he’s experienced, he still clings to that time. You find it incredibly charming, and somehow comforting. Barnes may be a completely insolent asshole, cocky and smug, but deep down he’s still that mama’s boy gentleman he was raised to be. 

“Promise me you’ll be here when I wake up.” You trace nameless patterns into his chest, worrying at your lower lip. “Promise me you won’t go back in that thing.” Bucky sighs a long suffering sigh, cupping your elbow with cool metal fingers.  He drawls your name so low and sweet, but also in a tone that tells you he can’t promise you that. 

“You know I can’t, princess.” The plates of his metal arm shift as he drums his fingers up your forearm. 

“Bucky, please.” You beg, shoving him insistently. “You’ve gotta-!” You can’t find your exact reasoning. You’d laid it out perfectly for Steve. But you can’t find the words to say it to Bucky. 

“What if I hurt you?” Even with the quietness of his statement, you can still feel the gravity of it in his voice. And there it is. That nagging little fear Bucky refused to voice to you before he went into Cryo. 

“You won’t.” It’s not a hope. It’s a statement. Bucky scoffs. 

“I already almost did!” His voice elevates, as if somehow that will help make his point. 

“But you  _ didn’t.”  _ The reminder rolls off your tongue without a hitch, because you remember. You remember -- 

_ His breathing turned ragged when you stared into his cold, stormy eyes. His metal hand twitched against your vulnerable throat as you sucked in a rasping breath. You can feel the chilled knife against your stomach, demanding acknowledgement as it prods the divot beneath your fourth rib. His nostrils flare, complications flashing in his eyes. Carefully, in his state of confusion, you reached up and thumbed the crease in his chin; his grip around your throat constricted. Even still, you stared trustingly up at him, determined. Your fingers slowly trace the curves of his mouth, and up his cheekbones. You know you’re going to have trouble talking tomorrow and Bucky’s going to avoid the hell out of you but that’s okay. Because there  _ will  _ be a tomorrow. You’re confident in that.  _

_ “J-” you wheeze in a breath, “Jam...es.” He blinks rapidly, that persistent line appearing between his eyebrows. You swipe your fingers over his cheek, his brow. He sucks in a sharp breath and his arm clicks and whirrs urgently. You greedily suck in a breath, choking and coughing as it jars in your throat.  _

_ The knife clatters to the floor a few feet away and before you can try and grab him, he’s out of your reach.Your name tumbles from his lips in a hurry, and he wants to touch you but won’t.  You try to call for him to, but your voice won’t come.  _

_ “Oh, oh shit.” He breathes. “Oh shit, baby are you okay?”-- _

“Yes.” He insists, “I did.” His grip on you loosens as if he feels he has no right to be sweet on you. “And I deserved all the hell that Sam gave me for it.” 

“Sam?” You question. You had no idea Sam had stood up for you, even if you didn’t want him to. “Look, that’s beside the point.” You pat his chest, before grabbing his metal arm and angrily putting it back over your hip. “I want you to live, Buck. I want you to take back every single year HYDRA stole from you and make it ten times better than it would’ve been even if you were still that womanizing, punk kid from Brooklyn that I know you were.” He is scarily still beneath you, and doesn’t say a word, so you keep going. “And I want to be there.” You add, “I want to be there when you’re finally happy. I want to be there whenever you don’t think you can go any farther. I want to be there when you finally find something that makes your past seem a little more bearable.” You force yourself up, no matter the pain, and lean up just so you can drink in that startled, shocked expression on his face. A pregnant pause passes between the two of you. Bucky stares at you, a dazed look in his eyes, and you keep your defiant, insisting gaze on him. Finally, after what seems like a complete eternity, Bucky blows out a shaky breath and runs his hand through his hair in nervousness. 

“ _ Shit.”  _ He breathes. His hands come up to your shoulders, and you’re grateful for it so you can lean some of your burdened weight on him. “Shit.” He says again. You smirk at him, because you know you’ve won this argument. 

“Speechless, Sarge?” You tease. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. 

“You weren’t kidding when you said…” He trails off, and the way he sucks in that next breath almost makes him seem winded. 

“That I loved you?” You ask. “No. I wasn’t anywhere near kidding. Now you promise me.” You trace his jawline with your thumb, not minding the scratchy stubble. His steel blue eyes betray his schooled face, you can see what your words have done to him. “Promise me so I can finally get a good night’s sleep with the best body pillow a girl could ask for.” The tenderness with which he rubs a cool circle in your cheek makes you want to blanket him forever, keep him locked safe and warm in your arms. Bucky props himself up on that metal elbow, cupping your cheek with a warm, flesh palm. His eyes lock in on you, glued to your own as if he can’t look away, even if he wanted to. His breath tickles your face as he stops to measure you, drink you in, before he closes the gap and melds his plush lips with yours. He’s just as talented using his mouth to kiss as he is with using it to smart off at you because the way he kisses you makes it seem like you’re the only other girl in the whole universe. You flush as you hear the monitor hooked up to your pulse go haywire, and you can feel his satisfied smirk press against your lips. You hungrily swallow it, clutching his shirt.  He dotingly sucks your lip in his mouth, and when you pull back for air, he kisses the corner of your mouth again as if he just can’t get enough. Your heart’s thumping rapidly in your chest; you couldn’t have even imagined that feeling better than it did. You barely suck in another breath before his lips are back on yours and his hand balls in your hair. You’re too tired to keep yourself upright, and you sag against him, letting his chest prop you all the way up on his own. You kiss him fervently, needily, and he returns it all tenfold. You’re trembling before long, downright shaking in his arms. He pulls back from you, breathing as heavily as you are as he strokes your hair. 

“They’re gonna think you’re havin’ a heart attack in here.” He breathes against your cheek. 

“Just about.” Your laugh is breathless as you drop your head against his shoulder. You hear the door to your room burst open, and before the doctor can round the corner you reiterate to Barnes’ smug face: “promise.” You tangle your hand in his hair lovingly. He gives you a meaningful stare as he tucks your hair behind your ear. 

“I promise.” He doesn’t have time to say anything else before Sam comes rushing in, followed by a doctor in tow. He lets out a disgusted scoff as he catches the sight of you, half on top of Bucky with your hands tangled in his hair and clutching his shirt as he supports you with his body. You see his eyes trace Bucky’s arm around your waist which only makes his lips purse. The doctor shoves past Sam as he crosses his arms disapprovingly, and you cling to Bucky as you prepare to face her displeasure. 

“ _ What  _ do you think you’re doing!?” She shouts, smacking the clipboard down on the table at your feet. “The patient is still in a fragile state-” Even you weren’t expecting the believability when Bucky interrupts so innocently--

“She bullied me.” He says it in the smallest voice possible that even you nearly believe him. You want to be aghast, but you remember that you told him to pin all the blame on you, so instead of tugging at his hair like you want to, you take a measured breath. The room falls silent as both Sam and the Doctor stare at you in disbelief. Finally, Sam scoffs in a supremely unimpressed manner. 

“ _ Please, Barnes-” _

“No.” You interrupt. “I did.” You wiggle on your butt as you protest him, sticking your nose in the air matter-of-factly. “I bullied James Barnes into bed with me. And this is where he will stay.” As if to prove your point, you sling your bare leg over his, not caring how your gown hikes up with the action. The doctor gives you a hard stare, crossing her arms like a true mother hen. 

Sam averts his gaze immediately, but Bucky hurriedly darts to fix your gown when you don’t move to yourself. 

“That is really not advisabl -” 

“It wasn’t a question.” You cut in, startling not only the doctor, but the man in your arms as well. He’s only really seen the gentle side of you; especially since the majority of your encounters had been over his or your nightmares. But you’re still a force to be reckoned with. “The remote, ma’am, if you don’t mind.” You hold out your hand to her, and she puffs her lips out in annoyed contemplation. The tension of your challenge chokes the air. You and the good doc have a good old fashioned stare down, and you take pride in the fact that your heart rate monitor starts to slow with your concentrated calm. 

A sigh. The remote plops in your hand. 

“No funny business. You better actually get some sleep tonight, else I’m kicking him out.” You smile sweetly at her, folding the television remote into your lap. 

“That’s fair.” You agree, leaning back against Bucky’s chest. She clucks her tongue, and snatches her clipboard before exiting the room, deeming her job done for right now. After the door clicks shut, Sam blows a low whistle through his teeth. 

“That was one ballsy move.” His tone is nothing short of amused admiration. You shrug with a snort. 

“Well it took a lot of work to bully this guy,” you defend, “I’m not losin’ all that hard work and dedication to another woman.” Bucky chuckles behind you, looping both arms around your waist as he rests his chin on your shoulder. 

“Never, sweet cheeks.” He burrows his nose into the crook of your neck, but his nickname gets a laugh out of both you and Sam. You feel him grin against your neck. 

“Alright, well now that I know you’re not dyin’ in here,” Sam drawls, “I think that I am gonna get back and debrief everyone that you’re alright. Steve and the rest got called out.” You nod in understanding. “Try not to draw too much attention while I’m gone.” He teases, reaching out to pat your shoulder affectionately. 

“You got it.” You salute him with a giggle, and he waves you off good naturedly with an eye roll, heading out of the room once more. You curl around Bucky, allowing the simple comfort of him cradling you in your vulnerable state. 

“Ballsy?” He asks, pressing a soft kiss to your shoulder. 

“Ah,” you forgot that he probably doesn’t understand that phrase. “It’s slang for risky, and courageous, I guess? But in a crass way. I mean, how classy could it be when it’s named after testicles?” Bucky rests his forehead on your shoulder as he snorts, pulling you easily into his lap. You’re careful to adjust your IV as Bucky picks the sheets out and covers the both of you with them. 

“My girl’s definitely ‘ballsy’.” He says it so approvingly, but you’re too busy getting caught up in the ‘ _ my girl’  _ part of that sentence. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”  You smile softly, reveling in his embrace. 

“Hey,” you start, “you haven’t seen much cinema, have you?” He hums contemplatively behind you, bringing you with him as he rests back against the headboard. 

“Nah, ‘cept that kid stuff. Oh, what was it?” He laces his fingers with yours. “Disney?” 

“ _ What?”  _ You ask, “You don’t like Disney?” His shrug is felt rather than seen, but you get the point. 

“It’s alright.” He concedes, “but it’s just kid stuff. Ladies used to go crazy for it back in the day, though. Don’t know how many girls I went to go see  _ Snow White  _ with.” 

“I am  _ so  _ offended right now.” You swat his arm lightly, but with no real malice. “When I get out of this hospital, Barnes, we are raiding my collection at home.  _ Snow White  _ is hardly the best one. You are in dire need of some Disney exposure.” 

“I’m sure you’ll convince me somehow.” 

“Oh, I will.” You wiggle into place in his lap, pushing the power button on the remote. “But, in the meantime, I’m going to find us some quintessential movies.” Bucky rubs circles into your skin as you channel surf, explaining terms to him when he asks what some of the titles mean. Eventually, you find a classic, and excitedly click it on. It’s only just started, maybe missing the first five minutes. 

“‘ _ Dirty Dancing?’ _ ” He asks in confusion. 

“Yeah, somethin’ an old soldier like you can definitely get behind.” You tease. 

“Hey, you sayin’ I don’t know how to treat a lady?” He asks in mock offense. You giggle. 

“No, I know that ain’t true with how fast you just  _ had _ to fix my gown earlier.” 

“Y’know what, kid,” he snakes his hand up beneath that aforementioned gown, cupping the entirety of your bare thigh in his wide span of fingers. “Back when I was young you were lucky ever to even see a girl’s thigh.” He pats the skin as if to punctuate his point. 

“Oh, yeah, and I’m sure you had so much trouble getting to third base and seeing one.” The sarcasm is evident in your tone, but Bucky is, again, confused. 

“What the hell does baseball have to do with your thighs?” You chuckle, remembering to try and tailor your speech for him. 

“It’s just a saying. First base is considered kissing, second is groping, third is either fingering or oral, and home is full on sex.” 

“ _ Oral? _ ” The shock in his tone is evident, and at this you dumbfoundedly turn to look at him. 

“Don’t you dare tell me you don’t know what that is.” You won’t believe him if he does. There’s no way he doesn’t. You absolutely refuse to believe it. 

“No, no I know but - why isn’t that considered sex?” His brow furrows adorably, as if he just doesn’t get it. “It’s just as … intimate?” You just shrug, because you’ve never really understood it, either. 

“No penetration, I guess. You could still consider yourself a technical ‘virgin’ if you’ve only had someone give you oral.” 

“What the hell.” He doesn’t say anything more, trying to consider it. 

“I know, it’s silly.” You agree. “Now-a-days it doesn’t matter if you’re chaste  _ anyway  _ \--  _ what _ ?” You ask defensively at the completely amused twitch of his mouth which suggests that he’s thinking of a few things he could do to get rid of any chasteness you had left. 

“You’re just talking about this all so casually,” he’s smug as he says it, “when it’s all so  _ filthy.”  _ You scoff, because his dated view of perversion is just so cute. You’ll show him  _ filthy.  _

“Can’t handle my filthiness, Buck?” 

“Quite the contrary.” His voice is low, husky. “You’re just my kinda gal.” He breathes out of his lungs and right into the base of your spine. His thumb inches slowly up your thigh, getting tantalizingly close to where you’d graciously guide it yourself -- 

\--if the circumstances were different. 

You smack his hand in a light scold, brushing your gown back into place when his hand quickly retreats from it. 

“If you act up too much she’s gonna come back in here and kick your smug ass out.” You rub your shoulders into the planes of his chest as you settle. “Now watch the movie.” Buck laughs, curling his arms around your stomach. 

“Alright, alright, dollface. Explain what I missed.” You smile, starting to explain Baby’s family vacation, and the whole resort itself. 

The movie seems to be more Bucky’s speed, but you do feel him grimace behind you about the botched abortion. He asks you about the practice now, and you obligingly explain it to him. He takes a minute to wrap his head around it, but eventually decides it to be a good thing, all things considered. 

You’re too tired to stay up for the entire movie, and Bucky only notices when he asks you a question and you don’t answer. He adjusts your position against him, pulling the covers up as far as they will go as he inches the two of you to a lying position in the bed. You gentle breathing is something he’s acutely aware of, and it’s not only comforting to feel against his chest, but entirely relieving. He’d been standing outside the operating room while you were being worked on. The sight of you had made the doctor pale for the brief second of having Sam explain the situation. He’d monitored the procedure like a hawk, even when it had become so stressful to see, that Sam had to walk away and take a lap. 

But when the doctors started screaming at each other, and he’d checked the subtle beep of the monitor of your heart, it had stopped so suddenly. One second, everything was fine, and the next that one lifeline to make sure you were alright, that one thing keeping him sane, suddenly just fell to a low buzz. He’s not sure that he’s ever ran into anything more frightening than the drone of that flatline. His breath had hitched and he felt as if his own heart had stopped too. He’d been too afraid to touch the glass less he cause a distraction that cost you your life, but his urge to bust into that room himself had been almost too strong to resist. 

It’s so surreal to have you safely in his arms now. He thought he might’ve actually lost his chance with you. Even before he’d gone into Cryo, you had become a permanent part of his world. After that first night, when he’d had his dream about being put back into the machine, having all of his progress wiped away  _ again,  _ his brain burning with the heat of the electricity; thick, searing plastic in his mouth - he’d woke up with a strangled cry and a cold, itching sheen of sweat. He’d trembled, tried to take stock of his surroundings, remind himself fruitlessly that he was indeed out of HYDRA’s grasp. But the dark room had reminded him of the lab; cold, badly lit, isolated. 

It had changed at the pressure of footsteps outside of his door. Suddenly, the illusion had a small crack in it. And when you’d quietly cracked his door open, the illusion shattered into a million tiny pieces. He wasn’t alone. You’d changed his life. Not only once, but every single time. You never failed to be at his door anytime he’d woken up screaming; or crying, or panicking. 

The time that you’d come when he was unable to breathe with the fear, the paranoia, the memory, you’d crawled into his bed, and come to very gently brush his arm. It was just a little touch; but it was enough to ground him. The time when he’d hurt you; when he’d come back to himself and seen the bruise on your throat in the shape of his cursed hand, something in him had broken. Something he didn’t know he’d had. He’d decided in that moment he wasn’t safe to be around. He’d decided that he was a danger to everyone. So he’d put himself in Cryo. 

And heard every single bit of conversation you’d thrown at him. He’d never gotten out of Cryo feeling so...calm. Normally, he’d wake up with a panic, unsure of his surroundings, unknowing of his circumstance, waiting for whatever dastardly task he’d have to go execute next. But he’d woken up this time with a sense of purpose. To find you. And what are the odds that it’d have been you standing right there, letting him out and not Steve Rogers? You, disobeying every insistence that everyone threw at you that he was too dangerous to let out, to be around, to trust. You, ten feet away defending off an attacker when it was obvious you were in no condition to do so. The lengths you went for him, the amount of care you’d shown him; it had just kept coming. And it’s nigh time that he returned the favor. He plans on it. Boy, does he plan on it. 

After the movie’s conclusion, Bucky chases sleep himself, eventually finding it late in the night when his arm around your waist starts to feel natural and comfortable and you roll over to nuzzle your cheek against his chest. 

 

***

“Gee, Buck, you couldn’t have waited till dinner and a movie to take her to bed?” He’d already been roused slightly at Steve’s presence walking in the door, but recognizing his gait had kept him from preparing for the worst. Bucky draws in a tired breath, forcing his eyes open even though it completely ruins the intimacy of the moment; your sleeping form against him. At some point in the night, you’d shifted to lay on your side on the mattress, and curled into his chest; tangled your body around him. Your nose is right in the crook of his neck now; he doesn’t understand why it doesn’t make him nervous. His eyes meet Rogers’ as a lazy smile spreads across his face. 

“She insisted.” He explains shortly. “Told me to tell everyone she bullied me.” Steve chuckles very quietly so he doesn’t wake you, sitting down in Bucky’s former chair and scoots it up close. 

“Sounds like she did do a pretty good job at bullying you.” Bucky slowly brushes your hair from your face absently, before curling his arm back around you as you sleep soundly. He’s never seen you actually sleep this long, and he hopes that for your sake (okay, and his too) that you stay that way for a little bit longer. 

“And the doctor.” He adds. “You know I can’t resist a strong broad.” Steve smiles that sunny smile that strikes so loudly in Bucky’s memory. When he’d nearly killed Steve, it was that smile that struck a chord, that smile that drove a pick into the ice surrounding his memory. He’d nearly forgotten it. 

“It’s good to see you like this, Buck.” There’s a measure of relief in Steve’s tone which makes him anxious. Steve expects so much from him, but he’s just not that man anymore. He can’t be a man that he only partially remembers. Not after all he’s done. Steve senses his discomfort so he gestures to the girl in his arms.  “How is she holdin’ up?”

“She seems okay.” He says, “she didn’t seem like she was in a lot of pain today.” You’ve been unconscious for the last four days, but he didn’t want to alarm you right when you awoke so he hadn’t said anything. They’d been the most nerve wracking four days of his life, though. 

“I’m glad she’s recovering.” Steve sighs, applying firm pressure to his temples. “I thought she was done for when it happened.” He admits. “And then she recovered and I thought that for sure this time…” Bucky falls silent, staring at his friend quietly. 

“She did.” He says. “For two minutes and forty five seconds.” Steve blinks, eyes flashing to the girl who’s very much alive in his best friend’s arms. He can see it on Steve’s face: guilt and fear. Bucky remembers them trying to bring you back -- every single agonizing second of it. It was the longest two minutes and forty five seconds of his life. 

“Damn.” Steve breathes, running his fingers over his short, cropped hair. “Cheated death twice now.” He murmurs. Bucky smirks. 

“She told me she was too spiteful to die.” At this, Steve seems to stop and consider. Bucky can see it in his eyes; he’s reliving every word you’d spoken to him till this point, and finally his contemplative look dissolves into a peaceful smile. 

“She’s probably right.” He agrees with an approving little nod. “You should have heard how she argued with me; made some pretty good points while she was at it.” Bucky snorts, pressing his fingertips between your shoulderblades to gently trace the dips of your vertebrae. He faintly recalls something being exchanged between you and Steve, but it’s like an echo fading out just as soon as your voice gets loud enough to hear. 

“What in the world could she have had to argue about with  _ you? _ ” His friend is a stubborn mule sometimes, but he’s generally a polite, kind person. Steve takes a moment to rest his ankle on his knee, and his arms over the rests. 

“You.” He answers simply. Bucky raises his eyebrows in a silent question. “She wanted you out of there more than anything. Said that you’d be better off trying to heal on your own than sleeping while we looked for a cure for you.” Steve slides his eyes away from Bucky’s, finding the lines in the wall to be of particular interest. “She may have had a point.” So that’s what it had been about, then. 

“Yeah.” He states, “I got that speech too.” Honestly you did make a few good points, and he doesn’t want to admit it but the admission that you would like to be there with him is sort of a game changer. Suddenly, his future doesn’t seem so isolated. Suddenly, someone wants to be there with him every step of the way. He never thought that he’d ever find someone like that; that he’d ever get the chance to have that in his life again now that he’s...changed. But his fear of hurting you is hardly something to dismiss. “I’m scared, Steve.” He admits, fingers twitching on your shoulder. “What if I lose it, what if I can’t control it and he’s  _ there?” _ He’d barely survived the last time it happened. The sight of that purplish handprint on your throat had nearly made him sick with guilt. It could be a lot worse next time. 

“You just have to trust yourself as much as she trusts you.” Steve answers the question as if that is something he’s capable of. He doesn’t understand why these two have such unprecedented faith in him. He’s exhibited many signs of instability and openly admitted it to everyone on top of that. He doesn’t get it. 

“I don’t know if that’s possible. I don’t even know why she feels remotely safe with me.” He sighs. The war in his head is hard to wade through. On one hand, he  _ wants  _ you. He wants to be with you. He wants to be able to love you. He wants to have you by his side. But on the other he fears for your safety. The other side of him has no regard for life. He could very easily take yours away from you. 

“Because, Buck.” He grins, “the gal loves you.” If Steve Rogers even noticed it, then it must be pretty obvious. Maybe if he’d been around for the past couple of months, he’d have picked up on it too. He feels like such an idiot. “Just give it time. You’ll see.” He’s not so convinced, but he doesn’t want to argue any further. This is a  _ good  _ thing, and he may as well give it a chance. He can’t let fear drive out any happiness from his life anymore. He’s had his full dosage of that already. 

“Well, I guess I have to.” He says. “She made me promise.” This seems to brighten Steve’s mood because the man gives him a knowing smirk that Bucky already knows the connotation of. He shoots Steve a withering glance, even if he knows the man is right. You’d already gotten him wrapped completely around your dainty fingers. To hell if he’s going to admit that out loud, though. 

“What’ve you been watching?” A change in subject is generously accepted, honestly. Bucky glances back at the tv, playing something he doesn’t recognize. But with him, that’s not really hard to do. 

“Dunno.” A noncommittal shrug, “I was sleepin’ pretty soundly before you came in here.” He can’t pass up an opportunity to dig at Steve -- it just feels right, somehow. As the man opens his mouth to object, Bucky keeps talking. “She had me watch a movie last night. Somethin’ called  _ Dirty Dancing.  _ It wasn’t too bad.” Steve sits back with a quiet ‘huh’. It’s comforting to know that he isn’t the only one who’s lost on all these things. 

“Sounds like you.” Bucky scoffs, only partially kidding. 

“What is  _ with  _ you two?” His tone is utterly dry. Steve just smirks at him knowingly, once again, but refrains from commenting. Instead, he carries on as if he hadn’t said anything. 

“It’s hard when the only things you’ve seen are  _ The Wizard of Oz  _ and  _ Snow White. _ ” Bucky can’t help but snort. 

“I know. We’re missing 70 some odd years of cinema.” Bucky nods toward you since his hands are a little busy, “she seemed pretty determined to catch me up on all of it.” Steve raises his eyebrows, knowing exactly how tall of an order that is. 

“Sounds like you’ve got plenty of date material.” He says, finally. 

“Yeah, somehow I doubt I’ll be focusing on many movies-” Bucky’s cut off by your hand reaching up and smacking him right in the mouth. It’s more of a tap than anything else, but he very definitely hears the pop against your palm. It’s enough to stop him mid sentence. 

“You’re an  _ ass.”  _ You mumble tiredly, sucking in a deep breath as you try to wake up all the way. Bucky blinks for a second, before turning his cheek so he can kiss your palm while Steve takes to trying to stifle his snicker.

“We’ve been over this, dollface.” He reminds you as your palm moves to tuck back against your chest. 

“You can never have too many reminders.” Even in your grogginess, your tongues as quick as ever. Bucky skips on the reply as you uncurl yourself from him and turn to look at Steve with a sleepy (adorable ) grin. “Hey, Steve. Was wondering if you were gonna stop by sometime.” 

“Sorry, we’ve been so busy after the attack--I tried to make it down here sooner but-” 

“It’s not a big deal.” You cut in. “I wasn’t worried about it.” Steve smiles fondly, knowing that all is okay between you two. 

“I’m so happy to see you’re alright.” You beam at him, and Bucky can tell you’re feeling rather accomplished yourself. Even though your exhaustion is visible in the droop of your eyes, he doesn’t know if he’s ever seen you more _awake._ And how could you not be? You’re alive. You made it. Not only once, but twice. 

“Honestly, you’ll have to thank Bucky and Sam for that.” His mind flashes back to emerging from the Cryofreeze, blinking blearily as the pitch dissolved into a vaguely familiar lab. It was the noise that had drawn his attention, one so disgustingly familiar to him: the whoosh of air rushing from someone's lungs when hit in the diaphragm.  He’d turned to see you, clutching your chest so tightly he thought your fingers might break under the pressure. 

Something had been so  _ wrong.  _ Normally, you were fast, lithe, nimble. But glimpsing you then he’d only seen sluggishness, jerky footwork, and panic in your attacks. That soldier would have killed you in no time if Bucky hadn’t gotten out of the Cryo tube when he did, both of you knew it. He’d felt your panic as if it were his own.  “Didn’t have time to follow your orders, I’m afraid.” Steve only chuckles, not seeming at all perturbed about your completely unapologetic tone. 

“You know,” he says, leaning one elbow on his thigh, “I went back for Bucky too when I was ordered not to.” Bucky swallows thickly. He remembers that tale. He’s not sure if his recollection stems from Rogers retelling, or from his own scattered memories, but he does remember a profound relief when he’d seen Rogers face. And disbelief. He could have died happy in that very instant. “And if I hadn’t, he wouldn’t have made it.” Bucky tightens his grip on you when you press your back against him. He shamelessly revels in the feeling of it; your small shoulder fits perfectly between the crease of his chest and shoulder, your waist lines up perfectly for him to drape an arm over without reaching too much, and if he were so inclined, it’d be too easy to tangle his legs with yours, and bury his face in your hair. 

“Guess you and I aren’t that different after all.” The conversation doesn’t even seem noteworthy to him while you’re sitting there so close to him. God, he’d been so  _ stupid  _ to refuse you. But he was afraid. He was not only afraid of hurting you, but afraid that the terrain would change and he’d have to up and leave you behind if HYDRA ever did emerge from the ashes and come to reclaim him. Honestly, there were so many variables where him getting involved with someone could go very, very wrong. He just didn’t want to hurt you. Obviously, yes, he didn’t want the Winter Soldier to emerge from his psyche and cause more damage than he already had, but even more pressing, he couldn’t imagine the remnants of  _ Bucky  _ hurting you in any way. 

But you were gracious. You’d said you’d wait for him. And you did, it just took you nearly dying at his expense for him to see it’d be okay to give the two of you a shot. One glimpse of his life without you was convincing enough. He didn’t need it to be a reality. 

He doesn’t feel the need to dip back into the conversation between you and Steve. He just lounges while enjoying your presence, listening to you and Steve prattle on and on about things he doesn’t really have any inclination of. Eventually, between you chatting and him trying to doze back off, the doctor enters the room, an unscrupulous look on her features. 

“You’ve got quite the collection of men.” She mentions, eyeing first himself, and then Steve, who quirks a brow in confusion. Bucky doesn't have to see your face to glimpse that lazy, commanding grin. He thinks that’s what he likes about you. You’re undoubtedly effeminate when you want to be, but you’re also challenging and demanding. You speak your mind, you aren’t afraid to talk about  _ anything,  _ and you certainly are willing to give him a what for. It’s charming, it’s arousing, it’s admirable. It’s so many things, and most importantly, it’s all combined in  _ you.  _

“Must be my charming personality.” You drawl, rolling back onto his chest. Bucky helps you sit back up, supporting your weak shoulders. The doctor purses her lips, and raises an unimpressed brow. 

“Yeah. I’m sure  _ that’s  _ what it is.” That comment earns a snort from Bucky and Steve looking like he’s not going to approach it even with his fancy Cap Shield covering him. She walks around to Bucky’s right, since Steve’s to the left of the bed. “If you don’t mind, sir, we need to run a check up.” The doctor taps the bedrail, looking at him expectantly over the rim of her glasses. He stares at her for a minute, absorbing her bright green eyes with the smallest sliver of crystal clear blue in the middle. She’s convincing, for sure. As much as he doesn’t want to leave the surprising comfort of this hospital bed, he knows that it’s for your own good. He leans up and stabilizes you as he shifts you from his leg, throwing one over the rail as the doc steps out of his way. You throw a hopeful glance at him over your shoulder. 

“See you later?” You ask it almost expectantly. There’s only a small glimmer of doubt in your voice that he might say no. Everyone in the room seems to shift their eyes to him. The pressure of it is enormous. It’s bizarre, of all the things that he’s done, things that he can handle smoothly, this is what makes him supremely uncomfortable. 

Expected behaviors. He shifts his look to you, and in your eyes is a soft, comforting glance as if you understand everything that just went through his head in the past millisecond. He leans back to press a soft kiss to your cheek, before pushing himself out of the bed carefully. 

“Of course, doll.” And with that the tension eases in the room, leaving it lofty once more. Bucky and Steve both leave the room, But he doesn’t wait for Steve to get a word in as he stuffs his hands in his pockets and heads for the exit. 

Through the stress of everything, there’s a small nagging in his mind that a cigarette would go a long way in soothing his nerves. It must be a flicker of the old Bucky, because he’s not even sure he’s touched a cigarette. He brushes flesh fingertips over his lips, rolling the imagined piece between his lips; papery, rich, bitter. 

The sensation is bizarre, and Bucky takes to ignoring it as he heads for the sidewalk, looking for a good place to go get some breakfast. 

***

“Oh! Couch, how I missed you!” You throw yourself on the soft black cushions of your sectional, sinking oh so satisfyingly into the worn cushions. Bucky is too busy absorbing the vastness of your loft in complete confusion and awe to join you on it. Aside from your hammock hung on the balcony, it is probably your favorite piece of furniture.  It probably sees more of your ass than your actual bed does, especially with the extended part of the sectional being so wide and long. It’s the perfect centerpiece, and it’s so comfy. You prop yourself up on your elbows, peeping over the arm to get a good look at the man you’d snuck into your apartment. Steve had said it was a bad idea, but things had been pretty quiet lately. You’d convinced him to allow it on the basis that there was no way in  _ hell  _ you or Bucky were going to be leaving this apartment for anything other than food runs with the kind of months you’d just had. A brief reminder of when he’d walked in on the two of you getting pretty hot and heavy in one of your bedrooms had convinced him not to argue. A little alone time could do the both of you good,he’d readily agreed. 

Plus you missed being home. 

“You can afford this place?” You quirk a brow, and temper your annoyance at the question. Bucky’s from the 40’s, you have to keep reminding yourself. It was a time where men were the breadwinners and women sat around and cleaned house all day. He doesn’t know any better, and you can’t hold that against him. You crawl forward to the end of the couch, gesturing him to come over. 

“Yeah,” you answer, “all five thousand dollars a month of it.” When you were younger, working as a merc, you’d piled up quite the savings. You’re no Tony Stark, but you’ve got enough to put you up for a while. Plus, with S.H.I.E.L.D. giving you pensions now, you’re not going for want. The figure nearly makes the man pale, and he takes another gander at the whole space. 

“Five thousand - for  _ this?”  _ You cock your head, resting your cheek in your palm. 

“Well, that’s pretty normal for a place like this now. Why?” You ask, “what did you pay back in the day for an apartment?” Bucky blows out a breath, seeming exhausted by the culture shock already, and moves to sit on the sectional part of the couch. 

“Let’s just say that you could have bought a house for another grand than that.” 

“Jeez, that makes me feel like I’m wasting my money.” 

“Well, I’da been lucky to even see five hundred dollars back then.” You chuckle, rolling up to a sitting position. 

“You better get used to that pretty quick, because five hundred dollars comes and goes so fast now you’ll forget you even had it.” You hop up from the couch, glancing around the loft. “Ready for the grand tour?” Bucky seems to like the change in subject, and nods. You show him around the first floor; the entertainment center, the kitchen and the placement of all of its utensils, the balcony, hammock, and your music and bookshelf section. You take special care to show him where all of your concealed weaponry is; including that one strapped beneath the bathroom counter ledge.  He follows you up the stairs to the actual bedroom part, where your bed sits pristinely untouched. What seems to impress him the most, though, is the sheer enormousness of your closet, as if he’s never seen such a thing in his life before. 

“Now I know that you’ve seen one of these before.” You tease, stepping past him into the walkin. It sits right over your kitchen area, so it’s essentially a room within itself, but with all of your needing to blend into wherever you were on a mission, your wardrobe proved to be pretty extensive. 

“No, I have.” He admonishes, following you in, “just usually only on those huge estates in the country.” You rifle through the racks, perusing through all your options. 

“What were you doing on a country estate, and in someone’s closet, no less?” Your teasing disbelief has him pretending to be offended, smoothly wrapping himself around you from behind. His arms rest at your stomach, and even though you’ve been effectively dating for a month now, and then denying that you were pretty much dating even longer before that, the feeling still feels new and exhilarating every time. 

“I am very capable of getting a date, dollface.” He says as if you need reminding. “I dated a girl once whose idea of fun was trying on cute little numbers for me.” A peal of laughter escapes you, and you lean back against him for a brief second to regain yourself. 

“Are you in need of a round two?” You needle your elbow into his stomach gently, and you feel him laugh beneath you.

“Well you’re certainly not low on options.” His hand reaches out in front of you, shoving hangers aside to find something interesting. You relax against him as he searches, mentally tabbing the things that he skips as a note for later : button ups, long skirts, a couple of plain dresses. One garment makes his hand stutter to a halt, and you’d have failed miserably if you’d tried to hold in your smirk. “This one’s nice,” it’s a soft, pillowy skirt with a soft rose lining. The waistband is high and form fitting, whereas the actual skirt of it flows out away from the hips. It’s one of your favorites, and you snatch it off the hanger with a smile. 

“I have just the thing to go with this.” You wriggle from his grasp, moving to the dresser you have tucked at the back of the closet, next to your shoe case. Rummaging through the drawers, you pull out a white, off the shoulder crop top, but tuck it into the folds of the skirt to hide it from him. You spin on your heel to start to shoo him out, but the look he’s giving you is not only amused, but a little endeared. That look is so different from the ones he’s given you so far, and the softness of it is so startling when it’s coming from a man who generally looks like he’s struggling to keep up with life. You walk over and stand on your toes to press a chaste, sweet kiss to his lips. “I’m happy you’re here with me.” You tell him quietly. He smiles. 

“I’m happy to be here, darlin’.” In the moment, it’s nice to soak in the intimacy of everything, and you mull it over without separating the closeness of your bodies.  But you soon itch to try that skirt on again, so you remove his hand from the small of your back (when did that get there?) and offer a close-lipped grin, 

“Okay, shoo, shoo,” you press gently against his chest, “I gotta change.” Bucky laughs, taking a precautionary step away. 

“Is shutting me out really necessary?” You playfully scoff, smacking his chest gently. 

“Well it is if you want it to be a  _ surprise. _ ” That actually elicits a laugh, and you know that he’s allowing you to gently push him backward, out of the closet. 

“I never said I needed a surprise,” he negotiates as you keep walking him back, knowing without looking exactly how many paces it is from the doors to the mattress. Your hope is that he hadn’t put it to memory just yet, even though knowing him he’d already meticulously analyzed every inch of your place. 

“That’s because  _ I  _ decided.” You clarify, finishing the distance between the backs of Bucky’s knees and the bed. If he didn’t know he’d reached the bed already, he gives no indication of it, and allows you to push him down onto his back. You pat his stomach once. “I’ll be right back, love.” And without giving him a chance to respond, you circle back, shutting the french doors of your closet with a whirl. The skirt and shirt go to a hook on the wall, and you take a moment to slowly shed your shirt. You know that he’s watching your silhouette through the textured glass in the doors, and it’s nearly impossible for you to miss an opportunity to be a complete tease. Your pants follow next, leaving you in just your skivvies. You haven’t been in here for a while, so finding the right drawer is difficult, but eventually your rummaging produces what you’re looking for and you add it to the hanger. 

Shoes come last, and you cock a hip out as you regard the case for a minute. Your eyes land on a pair of mock Louboutin stilettos, and you pluck them from the case. Turning them over in your hands takes you back to the last time you’d worn them and it brings a small smile to your face. Yes, these will do nicely. 

First, you gather the sheer stockings with lace trim, and inch those up until they rest comfortably against your upper thigh. Then, follows the skirt, and the shirt. Since the skirt is high waisted, the crop top falls an inch over the waistband to perfectly conceal your skin beneath. You remove your bra straps from your shoulder and stuff them into the cup as you pull the ruffled sleeves off your shoulders. Lastly, you slip the heels on, and a sense of completion falls over you. You take a couple steps, hearing the satisfying click of the heel against the floor and you smile to yourself. Your heart is stricken with the clutch of anxiety you usually get before you do something dangerous, but in this situation it’s only making the reveal that much more exciting. You grab both handles on the doors, and take a deep breath to still your pulse. You can tell he’s heard you approach the door because he sits up, waiting patiently. 

You blow out your breath, and press the doorknobs down so both doors swing wide open. The small, eternal second of silence between you opening the door and Bucky drinking you in is maddening.  You refrain from releasing your breath.  Your hands rest on your hips lightly and you step out of the closet as you wait for a response. 

Except that you don’t get one. He just silently looks at you, eyes drawing from your face agonizingly slowly over the gentle curve of your breast, back into your waist, over your hips and legs, and down to your shoes. He repeats the same process back up, stopping on your lips for a second, and then to your eyes once more. You lick your lips to abate the nervousness that’s flickered in your chest. After a brief second, you manage a quiet: “Well, what do you think?” Bucky takes another slow minute to just  _ look  _ at you, and you think that this outfit probably strikes a memory for him, because the fashion is a little bit of an homage to his era. 

“It’s beautiful,” he breathes for a second, and then, “You’re beautiful.” You let out a breath when he finally answers, anxiety unknotting from your chest. Your heels click as you approach him. He doesn’t budge, not even when you press your knee to the mattress right next to his thigh. Your hands move to rest on his shoulders as you inch ever closer to him, never once straying your gaze from his eyes. His hands move to your hips, stabilizing your figure as you press your other leg on the bed to straddle his lap. 

His eyes are so clear this close, dusted with starlike fleks set between deep pools of ocean blue. Your smile only lights them up further, and Bucky cinches your waist to lay flush against him. So many things run through his eyes at once: awe, speechlessness, adoration, satisfaction.

“You remember something?” His lips twitch into a faint smile, and he grips the curve of your waist with one hand so he can safely draw his fingernails down your arms. He shifts to fingertips when he reaches your wrist, and then gracefully curls your fingers over his own, guiding your hand to an awaiting, soft kiss. You smile as the absolute gentleness in him, treating you as if you’re something to be so completely prized and adored. 

“Yes,” he brushes your knuckles over his cheek feather light, “but I’d rather stay in the present, this time.” The  _ with you  _ is trapped in his eyes, tender and sweet and everything you’ve always wanted in a gaze from a man. His hair is soft beneath your fingers, and you greedily tangle a hand in it, drawing it back from his face as your brush through the long strands. His eyes flutter closed at the feeling, and the ease he feels with you is easy to see in the way his shoulders drop, his breath is gentle, and that persistent line between his brows is smooth. You love that he’s so comfortable with you this close and personal. He isn’t like this with anyone, half the time he still can’t even look at Steve without getting tense. Even though it’s horrible, you take selfish pride in the fact that it’s reserved only for you. That somehow you have found a place in this man’s heart when the man who seemingly knew him best was still a stranger.

His hair falls right back to where it was as soon as your fingers release it, and you pick through it again, before you lean to press a kiss to his crown delicately. He inhales deeply at the feeling of you on top of him, burying his nose into the hollow of your neck with you so close. The stubble dappling his face scratches your neck, but you only giggle at the slight tickling feeling. His smile presses against you. Everything is so gentle, even as he drops your hand to rub his thumbs into your ribcage, and his lips delve into the expanse of your skin. 

He’s gentle, sweet, doting. Even though it’s been so long for him, his instincts guide him well, because every movement he makes is purposeful, calculated, poised. His lips graze nearly baselessly up the vein of your throat, touching the delicate skin firmly only just often enough to keep you craving more. He hums when your breath falls from your lips timidly, and the vibration of his lips sinks right into your bones, warming you from the inside out. 

You brush your hands down over his cheeks and graze carefully over the ridge of his jaw, reveling in every inch of scratchy, untamed scruff.  Before your fingertips dip down far enough to graze over his throat, he pauses beneath you. Your hands jar to a halt. You’ve tried so hard to stay away from that area thus far, but you’d not been thinking about it this time. Your brain stutters to a halt and you drop your hands to his shoulders, looking down to him with worry. You’re ready to stop if he wants to stop- he doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want and you want him to  _ know  _ that. 

“I’m sorry -” You don’t finish because he nudges your jaw back up with his nose, taking great care to kiss your throat so dotingly; as if showing you how he’d want it done to him. His warm hand falls over yours, and he takes it to place right where you’d left off, wordlessly giving you permission as he busies his mouth with you. It still worries you to be touching something so vulnerable on him, especially when you know how nervous it makes him. But as you gather your courage to caress sweetly downward, he has no reaction other than to graze up above the ridge of your jaw. He starts to kiss even more hurriedly. He traces your cheek, your nose, the corner of your mouth. You can’t resist the draw of his mouth on yours with him so close. You kiss him before he’s ready, scratching fingers through the hairs on his nape to keep him close. 

Your urgency, your absolute  _ wanting  _ overwhelms him for a moment. He sits back and accepts your hunger, soaks it into his bones. 

As smoothly as you’ve ever seen it done, he shifts you to lie back on the bed so he can hover over you, never once breaking contact. Instead, he kisses you needily, fervently. Every ounce of restraint he’d showed you up until now washes out of him in one fell swoop, and you suddenly  _ understand  _ that he’d never wanted to say no to you. He pulls back, just briefly; his gaze heavy and his breath so slightly labored. You know it’s not from exertion, no, it’s from the wicked pulse hammering in his chest that you can feel all the way up in his throat. 

“Are you doing okay?” You whisper, as if talking too loud will shatter the moment. “We can stop if you need.” Relief cools the flush in your skin when you see him smile, genuinely. 

“I’m doin’ more than okay, sweetheart.” The look of him is the devil, even if his eyes betray something far more sincere. He  _ wants  _ you, but not only does he want to have you, he wants to take care of you, too. You can read it on him, he doesn’t have to say. “So unless you got any complaints.” You grin mischievously, tracing your finger over the strong line of his collarbone that’s left exposed from his jacket, and both his shirts beneath that. 

You don’t know how he wears so many layers, honestly. You’d smother. 

“I do have one.” You say in the most quiet, needy voice that you can muster. Bucky stops to consider your intent, but it’s obvious that he’s ready to drop it, roll over, and pretend nothing happened at all if that’s what you want. The two of you still have yet to progress past heavy petting because before you were able to get anywhere, you were either interrupted, or Bucky’s nerves definitely got the better of him. You know that he’s probably embarrassed by it, even though you’ve done your damndest to be as gentle and understanding as you knew how. But the fact that it is now proven to go both ways has you falling for this boy  _ that  _ much harder. You slip a finger beneath his collar, tugging it taut by the first button. “You, Mr. Barnes, seem to be a tad overdressed for my tastes.” The grin he flashes you is almost dopey as he hooks a hand beneath one of your thighs. The metal is chilly against your bare skin, but you hardly mind. 

“Darlin’ I’m always gonna be overdressed with you wearin’ skirts that short.” He punctuates his point by tugging the hem of afore mentioned garment. You work at his buttons in response. 

“Guess you’re gonna have to learn to stop dressing like such a grandpa.” Because it’s not like he’s going to ask you to be more modest. Not that you’re immodest for today’s standards. Bucky chuckles, that kind of chuckle that sits far in the back of his throat and rumbles, the kind that makes your knees weak even though you aren’t even using them. 

“You might wanna take that back,” he muses, drawing his metal fingers up the pliant flesh of your leg. He traces the dip in your knee and then circles back around. “You haven’t seen me in a suit yet.” 

“Oh,” you gasp dramatically, “you make a good point, Sarge.” You reach up to cup his cheeks, pulling him down to your level so you can cherish those soft lips of his once more. “How about we go fix that later,” you kiss him again, “I know a good tailor or two.” This is New York, after all. Bucky’s tongue is too busy with you for a minute to mouth off a clever reply, but you’re ready to forget the comment altogether when you kiss for so long your lungs ache. Buck eventually pulls away, licking the taste of you off his lips. 

“Pretty sure gettin’ me a suit isn’t on Steve’s list of approved reasons to leave the house.” You giggle, rubbing his side with your knee. 

“Don’t tell me you’re a goody-two-shoes.” You groan, despite your smile. 

“Hardly.” He nearly mutters, dipping back to mouth fluttering kisses over your jaw. The two of you move like clockwork with how often you’ve been around each other. Before he even begins to transition to your neck, you already crane it to expose the entire vein of your throat for him. Warmth blossoms in his wake that doesn’t entirely have everything to do with his mouth. You card your hands through his silky hair, breath hitching when he sucks and nibbles briefly at the sensitive flesh of your neck. You know that there’ll be a bruise there tomorrow and you buck your hips up at the thought of it; the thought of him being yours  _ finally.  _ After all this waiting, after all the patience you’ve given him, he’s ready to be with you; ready to give himself to you. A breath escapes him, almost needy but  _ oh so  _ ready, that vibrates against your throat. You drop your palms to his neck, running your nails over the vertebrae. 

“Darlin’” he says. You rub your knee up his ribs, attention turning to the zipper of his jacket. Oh, yeah you were taking that off, weren’t you? “You gotta remind me that this isn’t a dream.” He stops kissing you for a second to just rest your foreheads together. Staring into his eyes, you see everything. His jitters, his longing, his complete and utter disbelief that this is even happening. This must be difficult for him. His life has been a blurb of time passing and orders given ever since HYDRA got ahold of him. Not only that, but he only remembers snippets of the man he was before that. He’s lost, he’s  _ so  _ lost and confused. But this makes sense. You with him. It makes sense, and that’s why he’s so comfortable with you. 

“You creative enough to dream me up, babe?” You cup his cheek, grinning smugly when he laughs at you. He kisses you chastely. 

“You kiddin’?” Another chaste kiss. “You’re a man’s dream come true.” He smothers your laugh with another kiss, and you reach down to continue your train of thought from before. You grab his jacket zipper and force it down, slipping your hands beneath the sleeves to help inch it off. He breaks away from you for just a moment to throw it aside, and you hurry to the buttons on his shirt soon after. “Someone’s in a rush,” he says, drawing his knuckles over your side. You laugh, popping the last of his buttons open triumphantly. 

“I gotta even the playing field. You’ve got a head start on me wearing three different layers.” He laughs, helping you out by throwing his button up in the same general direction of his jacket, and then sliding his undershirt off after that. 

You’ve seen him shirtless before, but it just doesn’t compare when this time he’s leaning over you, looking like you mean nothing short of the world to him. You eyes graze over his scars - of which he’s got plenty with that metal arm of his. You run your fingers over the marred flesh. He doesn’t tense up at all, he just waits for you to take it in, absorb all the trauma that follows that part of his body. But he softens when you don’t look on him with pity, or remorse. You just accept it as a part of him, because you love every inch of this man; the good, the bad, the in between. All of him, no matter what parts of him he isn’t comfortable with. You run your fingers up from his shoulder to his jaw, thumbing his cheek sweetly. He takes your hand in his metal one, all bashfulness about it expelled from him. You both just smile at eachother, caught up in the intimacy of everything. The anticipation of everything has built up to this moment, this moment of revealing to the man you’ve been pining after  _ just  _ how much you care. 

You drop your hand to the hem of your own shirt, slipping it up and off. Bucky’s hands are on you instantly, drawing up the now bare flesh of your waist, slipping around to your back. His mouth is on you before you can get a word in, his hands working at the clasp of your bra. The expanse of his chest nearly swallows you, but you welcome it, curling your arms around his neck.  He’s warm, strong, and immersed in you entirely. 

Your clasp is undone with a pop and you fold your shoulders forward to pull the bra off. Bucky takes the liberty to toss it aside as if it were offending him somehow, which makes you snort.

His mouth is on you once more, trailing over your neck, shoulder, down between the valley of your breasts and over your stomach, elicti g sweet little noises out of you.  You arch up into his touch, ready for him to just  _ take  _ what you want him to, but he’s far too busy taking his sweet time mapping out every inch of your skin. His cheek scratches your ribs when he comes back up, and then your breasts, too. You giggle at that odd, strange sensation of his stubble against the soft, touchy skin. It’s probably going to be irritated tomorrow, but you just can’t find it in you to care right now. You grate your hips against his, feeling the hardness pent up behind the stretch of denim. Those pants must be killing him right now, and you wonder why he hasn’t gone to remove them just yet. His breath hitches when you brush over that hardness, so you take it upon yourself to do it again, slowly this time. He groans into your collar, fingers tightening around your ribs. 

“You’re killin’ me, doll.” He murmurs, working at your skirt zipper. It’s one of those small ones, and it’s always given you trouble, just like it’s doing to him. You let out a quivering breath at those words. Somehow, the ‘ _ doll’  _ sounds much less innocent this time. You steady out the skirt and he jerks the zipper down, slipping that garment off in one tug. He kisses you once more, as if he just can’t get enough of you, before slipping the last bit of your clothes off. Your need to have him is immediate as he grips your hips. You sit up enough to get at his waistband, and you know Bucky gets the message when he chuckles at you. “You got any condoms around here?” You lick your lips, wracking your brain for the location. 

“Hang on,” you say, rolling onto your stomach to crawl over to the nightstand. You hear Bucky slip the rest of his own clothes off as you rummage through your drawer. You’re kind of glad he said something because protection was not, at all, where your mind was at. You were far more focused on getting his pants off, but at least one of you is responsible enough to think ahead. 

Ish. 

You pluck the little package from beneath other various items, and turn to wave it playfully in front of him. 

“Thanks, past me.” You say, snickering as Bucky raises an eyebrow at you with that sinful smirk of his. You shriek as he grabs your calves to drags you back to him across the bed. You hook an arm around his shoulders, dissolving into laughter as he plucks the package from your fingers. You sit up with him when he goes to open it, kissing over the strong line of his jaw. He loops an arm around you to keep you close even has he tears open the plastic. You don’t pay attention as he rolls it on, because you’re too caught up in his strong shoulders, his chiseled chest, and the feel of his back in your hands. He cradles you in his arms, tilting your chin up with a knuckle to kiss you one more time as he gently places you on your back. He takes a moment to look over you, brushing hair from your face. 

“You okay with this, baby?” You smile, because even after all of that he’s still asking, and that’s sweet, in a way. Ever the gentleman, who’d have thought. 

“Couldn’t be more.” You reply, sliding your legs down flat against the bed. Bucky’s hands guide your knees open, and he positions himself in front of you, eyes never leaving yours. He slides inside slowly, lowering himself back over you in the process. The feeling is as intense as it is languid, and it’s even more consuming because you let him take control of everything. The breathy moan that escapes you hardly goes unnoticed as Bucky takes careful measure to nuzzle your cheek with his own, and press kisses over the bone of your jaw and up to your ear. You can’t get him out of your head. You can’t focus on anything else. You’re entirely consumed by him, by his breath on your skin, by the soft scrape of his body over yours, and the entirely full feeling of him inside of you. Your hands clutch at his back to at least find some semblance of solidity amid the myriad of sensations assaulting you all at once. You’d wanted this for so long and now that you have it you don’t know what to do with yourself. 

“Oh, Sweetheart,” his moan is right in your ear, and it shoots straight down your spine, making you quiver around him. His breath hitches, and you like the sound of that enough to think to move again. Once he’s found a rhythm you match it, clutching his back for stability. “You feel so good,” he breathes in your ear, and normally you’d try to bite back the moan escaping your lips but it only seems to invigorate the man on top of you, so you don’t try. “Bet you’d taste even sweeter,” his lips meld perfectly to the hollow beneath your ear. 

“ _ Bucky,”  _ you whine, because the thought of that filthy mouth of his anywhere near your vulva is far too much for you to even think about right now. 

“Babygirl, say it again.” He’s pleading with you, and you don’t even have to think twice about complying. 

“Bucky,” you repeat, tone just as needy if not more. He growls in your ear, and that noise alone has you shaking beneath him. You keen when he thrusts a bit harder this time, and after the encouragement he goes a bit faster. You almost feel as if he’s trying to keep up with your heartbeat, as fast as it is pounding away in your chest. Your name falls from his lips, again and again, like a mantra. You can hardly catch your breath enough to respond to him, only occasionally can you find enough breath whine his sole request so prettily in his ear. 

You curl your head into his form, burying your nose in his hair as he fills every inch of you again and again. His breath becomes ragged, and halts altogether when you push up to meet his hips in full. You rake nails over his back as he fists a hand in the bed just above your head. “Bucky,  _ please,”  _ you beg, nearly quaking with the feeling of him completely inside of you. Bucky’s metal hand cups your hip to help keep you up against him. He goes agonizingly slow on the last thrust, and you can feel every single millimeter of the movement, biting your lip in attempt to keep yourself together. Bucky’s thumb runs over your mouth slowly, traitorously tugging your lip from beneath your teeth. You snap your gaze to his, as if to tell him just how much of a traitor he is, but the hungry, tense look in his eyes snatches your breath right out of your lungs, and settles a coiling warmth in your stomach. 

You suck that thumb into your mouth, lathering your tongue over it. Your revenge is exacted with how he stutters in his pace, sucking in a hard breath. 

“Sweetheart,  _ baby,  _ those sweet little noises are gonna be the death ‘a me.” He smothers your reply with his mouth as he slides back inside of you once more, leaning up just enough so the length of him brushes over the sensitive nub of your clit. Your hips jerk in surprise, and you cry into his mouth, nails digging into his shoulders. He grunts against you, dragging his teeth over your bottom lip. He repeats the maddening action again, stealing the breath from your lungs. Your legs start to quiver as your muscles clench around the man inside you. He slows down once more for you, letting you ride out the sensation of him against your walls. You clutch him tighter as that coil in your stomach knots, threatening to snap. You breathe unsteadily, preening - arching your back. “That’s it, doll, come for me.” He kisses your cheek, your jaw, your neck. You suck in a breath - 

“ _ Bucky _ .” He sinks back inside of your slick, and you’re done for. Your world is both flipped upside down, and righted, confusing, yet complete. You’re dumbfounded that you’re here with  _ Bucky Barnes  _ in your apartment, and you’ve just soiled the sheets with him. You wouldn’t have it any other way, though. Not a chance. 

He stays inside of you, riding out your orgasm with his own. And even when the both of you are finished, neither of you makes a move to separate. You keep staring straight into those beautiful blue eyes of his, breathing heavily with the excitement of everything. Finally, after he goes soft, he decides to pull out of you, but not before enveloping you in a sweet, tender kiss. He pulls you with him as he rolls over onto his back, and you collapse on the bed next to him, sliding up close to his solid figure. He reaches down to tie off the condom, tossing it into the trash beside the bed he somehow already knew was there. You need to go clean up yourself, but you have no desire to move from his side, where he’s got an arm slung over your waist and you can feel his heartbeat next to your own. 

“Doll, you’ve got some claws on you.” He teases, and you stare down at your nails in contemplation, snorting. 

“They say that’s how you know someone’s a good lay.” You reply, throwing your leg up over his hip. His metal hand splays across the supple flesh, rubbing slow circles into your skin. He chuckles. 

“Yeah, I’m sure  _ that’s  _ why girls are always lookin’ from behind.” You giggle, pressing a kiss to his chest. 

“Guilty as charged.” You say in a sing-song, ending in a laugh from the both of you.

Eventually, you decide to go shower, and an invite for Bucky is readily accepted. You find that he’s a rather nice roommate as he’s wonderful company and a great body pillow who never once complains when you sprawl out on top of him. You make good on your promise to raid your Disney collection with him. He doesn’t dislike it as much as he thought he would, much to his own chagrin(though he did refuse to watch Snow White). After tearing through them you weasel out of him that  _ Aladdin  _ is his favorite. 

Once you two are done with those you start plowing through movie after movie. You show him classics like  _ Grease, Titanic,  _ and  _ Some Like It Hot.  _ He appreciates any Marilyn Monroe movies, mentioning that he’d seen her once when he was a teenager, which is both utterly hilarious and completely unfair to you.  __ You find that he does make good on that promise to not really pay much attention to the movies, but you can hardly complain when his affections turn into sex on any readily available surface in the house. You do little things to make him feel more at home like buy brands of foods he recognizes, or pull things from your closet that’ll look familiar to him (though he’s voiced his opinion on your yoga pants and you’ve started wearing those as frequently as possible). All in all, living with Bucky feels completely natural. It’s not long before you even allow him to steal food from your plate, and fix you coffee in the morning, regardless of how strong he makes it.  

You two carry out your time in the apartment in alone without a single visitor, and you think, for the first time since you’d met him, that Bucky Barnes seems to have found some peace of mind and you couldn’t ask for anything more. 


End file.
